Hizzonerless, Mayor Adams

This should be the immediate end of NYC Mayor Eric Adams's career.

 

In a sharp escalation over the migrant crisis, Mayor Eric Adams claimed in stark terms that New York City was being destroyed by an influx of 110,000 asylum seekers from the southern border and said that he did not see a way to fix the issue.

“Let me tell you something New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to — I don’t see an ending to this,” the mayor said on Wednesday night in his opening remarks at a town hall-style gathering in Manhattan. “This issue will destroy New York City.”

Mr. Adams, a Democrat in his second year in office, has clashed with leading members of his party as New York City has struggled to provide housing and services to the migrants. For months, Mr. Adams has criticized President Biden and Gov. Kathy Hochul for failing to help the city handle the asylum seekers and pleaded for additional funding and expedited work permits.

But the mayor’s comments on Wednesday were his most ominous yet. He pointed to new projections that the city’s budget gap could grow to nearly $12 billion — the same amount that city officials estimate that the migrants could cost the city over three years.

“Every community in this city is going to be impacted,” Mr. Adams said at the meeting. “We have a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut — every service in this city is going to be impacted. All of us.”

The surge of migrants crossing the southern border has overwhelmed the city, with nearly 60,000 occupying beds in traditional city shelters and in more than 200 emergency sites. As New York City students returned to school on Thursday, city officials said that about 20,000 migrant children were expected to join them.

The financial and logistical burden has caused the mayor to repeatedly press Mr. Biden for help this summer, saying last week that the city’s requests were still mostly “unaddressed” and calling for a federal emergency and a national “decompression strategy at the border.”

 

To recap, the Democratic mayor of the largest, most populous, most diverse city in America sounds precisely like a Republican politician and blames President Biden for having too many migrants coming to the Big Apple, and blames him for yet another round of social services cuts that will "have to happen."

As much of a bonehead that de Blasio was, as much as a corrupt asshole that Bloomberg was, Eric Adams is the most anti-New Yorker that ever got into Gracie Mansion in my lifetime (yes, even Rudy didn't go this far) and NYC cannot get rid of this guy quickly enough.

Sunday Long Read: It Taxes The Imagination

Our Sunday Long Read this week is ProPublica's massive new report on just how much in income tax America's richest billionaires pay, and the answer is "nowhere near enough", while middle-class Americans continue to live paycheck to paycheck because they pay as much or more in taxes than their net worth increased in the last 15 years.

 

And thanks to Congress, among them some of the richest people in the country, it's all 100% legal.

In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.

Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.

ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.

Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.

Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, amassing little wealth and paying the federal government a percentage of their income that rises if they earn more. In recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes. The highest income tax rate, 37%, kicked in this year, for couples, on earnings above $628,300.

The confidential tax records obtained by ProPublica show that the ultrarich effectively sidestep this system.

America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell.

To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period.

We’re going to call this their true tax rate.

The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.

It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly due to the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.

 

You want to know who the biggest tax scammer in the nation is? Not Bezos, not Zuck, not Elon, not Bloomberg, but Warren Buffett. He made close to $25 billion from 2014 to 2018, and paid only $24 million in taxes.

 

His tax rate was 0.10%.  One one-thousandth of what he made.

 

Bezos at least paid a billion in taxes over five years on his $99 billion. But Buffett? There's a guy who deserves to see the inside of a tumbrel. 

Well, they all do.

Warren goes first, however.

 

Primary Positions, Con't

Joe Biden had a very good night last night on Super Tuesday, winning several Southern states (including Texas!) as well as Massachusetts and Minnesota, while Bernie Sanders won Vermont, Colorado, and Utah and the primary's biggest prize, California.  Five Thirty Eight's Sarah Frostenson recaps the Night Joe Came Back.

Well, it’ll still be days or weeks before we have the full vote total in California, and it’s still too close to call in Maine, but with Texas now in the win column for Biden, this evening’s top-line takeaway is even clearer: Biden mounted a comeback and won Super Tuesday.

In total, Biden won nine of the 15 primary contests at stake tonight, pulling off a number of upset victories, including a win in Minnesota (we’d projected Sanders would win there), a win in Massachusetts (Sanders again), and a win in Texas (that was more of a toss-up going into tonight), but basically Biden cleaned up across the board. He performed well in states where he wasn’t even really competing, and he proved he’s more than a regional candidate.

Sanders, on the other hand, did not have a great evening. He won just three states outright (Colorado, Utah and Vermont) and underperformed expectations. So far, he does seem on track to win delegate-rich California, though we won’t know the exact margin for a while yet.

Once all the Super Tuesday results are fully counted, 38 percent of delegates will have been awarded in the primary race, but this nomination fight is far from over, and there’s a real question about where it will go from here.

The big story from Super Tuesday was that young Democratic voters didn't show up for Bernie's revolution.  Not even close.

Exit polls for five southern states that Biden won – Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia – found that young voters did not show up at the polls in the numbers they did in 2016.

In addition, the Vermont senator has been grabbing a smaller share of them in most cases.

•  In Alabama, only 7% of the voters were in the 17-29 range compared to 14% in 2016. Sanders won six of every 10 of those voters Tuesday compared to four of 10 in 2016.
•  In North Carolina, 13% of Tuesday’s electorate were young voters, compared to 16% four years ago. Of those, 57% went for Sanders in 2020 compared to 69% in 2016.
•  In South Carolina, young voters made up 11% of the electorate Tuesday compared to 15% in 2016. Sanders won 43% of those voters Tuesday compared to 54% four years ago.
•  In Tennessee, 11% of those voters showed up Tuesday versus 15% in 2016. Sanders did better among that group Tuesday winning 65% compared to 61% four years ago.
•  In Virginia, young voters comprised 13% of Tuesday’s vote compared to 16% in 2016. Sanders won 57% of those voters Tuesday compared to 69% four years ago.

Even Sanders’ home state of Vermont showed a lackluster turnout of young millennials and 'Gen Zers.' Only 10% of the state’s electorate were under 30 compared to 15% when he ran against Clinton, according to exit polls.

And a similar trend was playing out in Texas where 16% of voters were between 17 and 29 compared to 20% in 2016.

Sanders couldn't get the numbers he got from four years ago, even in his home state.  The why of that is two words: Liz Warren.  She split Sanders's votes far more than Bloomberg split Biden's haul.

And speaking of Liz Warren, she came in a distant third pretty much everywhere last night, even in her home state of Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Warren had a plan for winning. It didn't work: In 18 nomination contests, she hasn't finished above third place — including in her home state.

Now, she's facing political and financial pressures to get out.

Warren's campaign declined to comment on her next steps after her dismal Super Tuesday performance. But allies who speak regularly with the campaign say the mood was bleak. A small wave of last-minute endorsements from groups like EMILY’s List, along with late financial help from a super PAC, did not significantly move the needle.

That's left the Warren campaign to wonder whether a path forward exists. While the campaign had insisted it still saw an opening by going to the convention — she will likely collect at least several dozen delegates Tuesday — the results were far below their own publicly-released projections.

How well Bernie Sanders does from here depends on how long Liz Warren stays in the race.  As I said after Nevada, unless something happened that changed the entire trajectory of the primary race on Super Tuesday, Bernie was going to be the presumptive nominee.

That something was "Joe Biden winning in SC and both Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropping out and endorsing him."

It's a fight now.  Sanders remains ahead in national polling.  But Joe did something I thought that couldn't happen: he most likely ended up with more total delegates last night.  The resurrection of his campaign is something unprecedented. A week ago we were counting Biden out and Bernie running the table seemed all but assured.

The "all but" happened.

Let the battle commence.

[UPDATE] Bloomberg is out.

BREAKING: Michael Bloomberg suspends campaign https://t.co/yNCVUDNe1g

— Axios (@axios) March 4, 2020

Bye, Mike.

Last Call For Primary Positions, Con't

Ahead of tomorrow's Super Tuesday primary voting, Sen. Amy Klobuchar is leaving the race and endorsing Joe Biden.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar will end her presidential bid on Monday and endorse Joe Biden, a campaign aide tells CNN. 

The Klobuchar campaign confirmed that the senator is flying to Dallas to join the former vice president at his rally, where she will suspend her campaign and give her endorsement on the eve of Super Tuesday. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg also will endorse Biden at the rally, a source familiar told CNN. 

Klobuchar's path to the nomination all but closed after she posted sixth-place finishes in Nevada and South Carolina, a sign that the Minnesota senator's surprising showing in New Hampshire would not be nearly enough to propel her toward the nomination. 

A Democratic official told CNN that the Klobuchar campaign was worried that the senator would lose her home state of Minnesota on Tuesday. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the race's front-runner, is holding a rally in the state on Monday night. 

The high point of Klobuchar's campaign came in mid-February, when a strong debate days before the New Hampshire primary led to a third-place finish in the state. But the showing even caught Klobuchar's campaign off guard, and a lack of organization on the ground in Nevada and South Carolina, along with the senator's inability to win over Latino and black voters, ultimately stalled her candidacy.

Former Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid also endorsed Biden today, and the timing could not be better for the former VP.

Democratic primary voters appear to be giving former Vice President Joe Biden another look after his victory in the South Carolina presidential primary and ahead of the key Super Tuesday contests.

A Morning Consult poll conducted Sunday found 26 percent of Democratic primary voters nationwide said they’d vote for Biden if the Democratic primary or caucus were held in their state today, up 7 percentage points since polling conducted ahead of Saturday’s first-in-the-South primary in the Palmetto State.

National support for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) fell 3 points, to 29 percent, while former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg remained in third place, with 17 percent.

Sanders saw his first-choice support shrink among black voters, leaving him in a tie with Biden, at 31 percent. Among Hispanic voters, who will play a prominent role in Tuesday’s contests in Texas and California, Biden’s first-choice support increased 9 points, to 21 percent, though he still trailed far behind Sanders, who has more than twice that share of support with the voting bloc.

With 33 percent, Sanders leads in an average of polling from the 14 Super Tuesday states, while Biden saw a 7-point boost, to 24 percent, following his South Carolina victory. Bloomberg, who’s staked his campaign on victories in Tuesday’s contests, is backed by 16 percent of Super Tuesday voters, down 4 points from the previous polling.

The latest poll of 2,656 voters who indicated they may vote in the Democratic primary or caucus in their state, which has a 2-point margin of error, was mostly conducted before former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg of Indiana ended his campaign on Sunday night. Billionaire Tom Steyer, who dropped out of the race on Saturday night, was also included in the poll, coming in with 1 percent of the vote.

The issue for Biden is now Michael Bloomberg is on the ballot in the Super Tuesday states tomorrow, Michigan and 5 other states next week, Big Tuesday states of Florida, Illinois, and Ohio in two weeks, and Georgia in three.  That will be over half the states and nearly two-thirds of delegates decided by then.

How much will Bloomberg cut into Biden's share, and will it be enough to put Bernie in the lead?  Will Warren stay in or drop out and endorse Sanders? We'll find out a big chunk of that picture this week.

Last Call For Primary Positions

Joe Biden rolled to a big win in South Carolina, and billionaire Tom Steyer is folding his cards and cashing out.  Even Jon Chait is apologizing to the universe for throwing dirt on Biden's grave a bit early.

After Joe Biden finished an astonishing fourth in Iowa and then in fifth place in New Hampshire, I wrote a postmortem for his campaign. It now looks like one of the most wrong things I have ever written. It was pointed out to me after I published that I described Biden’s campaign in the past tense, something I did not plan or realize beforehand. It simply seemed obvious nobody could come back from such a catastrophe — least of all Joe Biden.

After Biden’s South Carolina victory, the first primary he has ever won in his three presidential campaigns, things look quite different. The status of Biden’s campaign has not only been upgraded to “alive” — at this point he is the primary, and probably the sole, alternative to Bernie Sanders. At the risk of overreacting in the opposite direction, Biden appears to have taken control of the Democrat Party’s center-left voters so decisively none of his mainstream rivals will be able to sustain a rationale for their candidacy. Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg — all of whom have made Biden-esque pitches to the electorate — will face enormous pressure to leave the race after Super Tuesday, and possibly even before.

The mistake many of us made with regard to Biden was viewing his campaign through the prism of age. Biden looks and acts much older than Bloomberg, Sanders (who has looked exactly 85 years old since the 1980s), and even Trump, who also appears to be experiencing rapid cognitive decline. Biden campaigned unevenly and delivered uncomfortably meandering performances at the debates that often worsened as each debate dragged on. It seemed intuitive that the pattern of decline would also apply to Biden’s campaign. His best day would be his first, and he would slowly exhaust the supply of pent-up goodwill that was his primary asset.

But whatever his limitations, Biden has not gotten worse. His last debate performance was his best. It was almost good.

The heart of Biden’s claim to the mainstream Democratic mantle is his impressive performance with African-Americans, who had little representation in the previous three contests. They are not attracted to Biden out of mere nostalgia, gratitude, or familiarity. Black voters in the state — especially older ones, who have the closest personal experience with overt white supremacy — have thought carefully about the primacy of ousting Trump over every other goal, as well as their role in that process.

This conclusion is not me reading my views onto them. Pay attention to what voters there have told reporters like Astead Herndon, Eugene Robinson, and others. Robinson described the mood of voters he met as “urgent pragmatism” to end a presidency that is reversing decades of racial progress. “Black voters know white voters better than white voters know themselves,” one voter told Herndon. “So yeah, we’ll back Biden, because we know who white America will vote for in the general election in a way they may not tell a pollster or the media.”

It's that second-to-last paragraph that shows Chait knows damn well Biden wasn't done yet, and most of all, black voters, hadn't weighed in yet in Iowa and New Hampshire when we're the backbone of this party and have been for decades.

Sanders's win in Nevada is significant, and he still has a lot of delegates he can pick up in California and Texas.  But Biden has put the marker down as the Not-Sanders, and there's a lot of territory in that area Biden can cover.

It would be different if Sanders was racking up majority wins.  He's not.  Neither is Biden by any means, and Bloomberg is essentially replacing Steyer now as the billionaire in the race, but the fight is now truly on.  Super Tuesday results are 72 hours away, and after that we'll have a real idea of who will be left.

Not-So-Great Expectations

Roughly two-thirds of Americans expect Trump to win in November, and that includes a healthy chunk of people who have no intention of voting for him, in a new CBS News/YouGov poll.  The poll also finds Sanders in the lead in national polling with 27% of the vote, but also sees Elizabeth Warren rocketing into second at 19% past Joe Biden, now at 17% heading into South Carolina on Saturday.

Whether or not they're voting for him, 65% of registered voters nationwide think President Trump will definitely or probably be reelected, including more than a third of Democrats who think so. Republicans are especially optimistic: more than 9 in 10 expect him to win.

Still, potential head to head matchups with all the major Democratic candidates against Mr. Trump show a tight race no matter who the Democratic nominee is, with no more than three percentage points separating the Democratic candidates from Mr. Trump in any matchup with the six top polling Democratic contenders.





Most voters have dug in. When it comes to who they will vote for in November, 6 in 10 voters say it doesn't matter who the Democratic nominee is, or what Mr. Trump might do over the next year.

Despite these close matchups, no Democratic candidate gets more than about a quarter of voters who thinks they would probably beat Mr. Trump (Bernie Sanders does best at 27%). Republicans are particularly confident of Mr. Trump's chances: large majorities think each of these potential Democratic opponents would be long shots to beat him in November. Democrats are less sure of their party's chances. They express the most confidence in Joe Biden and Sanders, but fewer than half of Democrats think any of the candidates is above a "maybe" to win.

This is a big indication that Trump won't get 50% of the popular vote in November, but with the electoral college as it is now, he doesn't need to.  A 47%-45% or 47%-44% result with the Democrat winning the popular vote is almost certainly going to turn out the same way as things did in 2016.

The big wild card is Florida, with the fight over disenfranchising the 1.5 million felons in the state (the vast majority who are black) who still may not be able to vote in November thanks to the GOP's Poll Tax 2.0 project, and how many of them who can get registered will turn out.  Don't expect every felon to flock to the Democrats, either.  The truth is I don't know how all that will play out in the state.

Democrats can win without Florida, but Trump will have a tremendously difficult time winning without it...unless he wins every other state he won in 2016.  If he does that, he still ends up with 277 without Florida, and he wins. It remains the ultimate battleground state, but we're actually in a situation where both candidates can win without it.  PA, WI, and MI combined are 46 electoral votes compared to Florida's 29, so the race is still going to come down to the those three Rust Belt states.

Here's what the 2016 map would look like with all four of those states as toss-ups:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

As you can see, it's basically even elsewhere in the US.  The killer is if Trump wins Wisconsin and the Democratic candidate wins Pennsylvania and Michigan, it would be Dems 268-Trump 241, and Florida decides the whole ball of wax.  If Florida then went for Trump, it would be a 270-268 victory.

That should be keeping everyone up at night.

Bern-ing Through The Competition

With a substantial win thanks to Hispanic voters in Nevada's caucuses yesterday, unless something dramatic changes in the next two weeks or so, Bernie Sanders will be in a commanding position position after Super Tuesday as the opposition to him is hopelessly split. That should be reminding people of Donald Trump's 2016 run in many, many more ways than just one...

Put "Bernie Bros" on the back-burner.

It's the army of sobrinos and sobrinas — the Spanish words for nephews and nieces — who should strike fear in the hearts of Bernie Sanders' rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination and party elites after he ran up the score among Latino voters in the Nevada caucuses Saturday. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and other Latinx backers of Sanders refer to him fondly as their "tío," or uncle.

Sanders was the choice of 54 percent of Hispanic caucus-goers Saturday on his way to steamrolling to the most convincing victory of the primary season, according to an NBC entrance poll. His closest competitor, former Vice President Joe Biden, racked up 14 percent, with no other candidate cracking double digits.

Those results signaled that the energy Sanders has poured into building a more diverse coalition than his failed 2016 campaign is paying off at just the right time. He can now stake the first claim — less than two weeks before the "Super Tuesday" contests in 14 states — to having won a state where white, Hispanic and black voters are all represented in substantial numbers.

"If you can’t put two out of those three together, you should start figuring out your exit plan," Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., said of most of Sanders' rivals — excluding Biden and former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg — in a telephone interview with NBC News.

Gallego added that he is "not surprised" that Sanders performed so well because the candidate and his campaign learned from missteps in 2016 and organized early and effectively in the Latino community.

The outcome among Hispanic voters here could easily portend success for Sanders in delegate-rich California and other heavily Hispanic states and congressional districts coming up on the primary calendar. At the same time, Sanders has closed Biden's lead with African-American voters to 31 percent to 29 percent nationally, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Friday.

If things hold true, in two weeks pundits are going to start attaching "presumptive nominee" in front of "Bernie Sanders" and it's going to be true.  After tonight, it's time for the second-stringers to drop out: Steyer, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and I hate to say it, Warren.  Bloomberg won't go anywhere, but the only way anyone can stop Bernie at this point is everyone else bailing and leaving the road open for somebody, and that somebody should be Biden at this point.

It won't happen, of course.  Too much ego involved, and by splitting the opposition among five opponents, Sanders now has an open, if not easy path to Milwaukee in five months.

Sanders still isn't pulling in majorities, which means there's still a chance for somebody to rise up to challenge him.  But everyone still in the race believes they are one who will win, and all but one of them are 100% wrong...

That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

The latest Quinnipiac University national poll wrecks the notion that Trump somehow benefited from his acquittal, as he gets crushed in all the head-to-head matchups by a margin that not even the electoral college can save him from.

Among all registered voters, Democratic candidates lead President Trump in general election matchups by between 4 and 9 percentage points, with Bloomberg claiming the biggest numerical lead against Trump: 

• Bloomberg tops Trump 51 - 42 percent;
• Sanders defeats Trump 51 - 43 percent;
• Biden beats Trump 50 - 43 percent;
• Klobuchar defeats Trump 49 - 43 percent;
• Warren wins narrowly over Trump 48 - 44 percent;
• Buttigieg is also slightly ahead of Trump 47 - 43 percent. 

President Trump's favorability rating is underwater, as 42 percent of registered voters have a favorable opinion of him, while 55 percent have an unfavorable view of him. However, it is his best favorability rating since a March 7th, 2017 poll, when his favorability rating was a negative 43 - 53 percent.

So people hate him slightly less now, but he still loses to everybody.

Even Bloomberg.

Press The Meat, Con't

An emboldened Trump regime is now fully committed to its war on non-FOX media outlets, regularly excluding them from press events and junkets, and unless the media starts boycotting the regime altogether, Trump is going to pick them off one by one. NPR is still being blacklisted over Mike Pompeo, and Bloomberg News was ejected from Trump's Iowa rally last night as the Trump regime has a standing blacklist order against them.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump’s campaign ejected Jennifer Jacobs, a reporter for Bloomberg News, out of a campaign event in Iowa.

The decision, according to the report, is in accordance with the campaign’s “pledge no longer to approve credentials for the news organization.”
Trump cracked down on credentials for the organization as its CEO, Michael Bloomberg, has mounted a campaign for president and blanketed the airwaves across the country with advertisements slamming the president.

The president’s relationship with the press has always been among the most hostile of any modern chief executive, with Trump repeatedly referring to reporters as “enemies of the people” and advocating that America should “open up libel laws” to allow politicians to retaliate against reporters who cover them. His White House previously drew controversy for revoking the press credentials of CNN reporter Jim Acosta, a move that was blocked by a federal judge he had appointed. 

Now Trump is excluding CNN from its pre-SOTU lunch today.

President Donald Trump's targeting of CNN is moving to yet another arena: The annual presidential lunch with television network anchors. 

CNN anchors are being excluded from Tuesday's lunch, three sources said on Monday night. 

Trump, like presidents before him, typically invites anchors from all the major networks to dine with him at the White House in advance of his State of the Union address. The lunch conversation is considered off the record, but it gives the anchors a sense of the president's state of mind before they anchor SOTU coverage. "Despite Trump's persistent attacks on the news media, he's kept up such traditions," Politico pointed out last year. 

CNN's Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer attended last year's lunch. Blitzer has been attending these lunches longer than almost any other anchor — 20 years in a row. 

Journalists from other networks are still planning on attending Tuesday's session, according to sources at those networks. 

This is the first time in recent memory that a president has singled out one network and opted not invite any anchors from there. 

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham did not respond to a request for comment on Monday night.

This will keep up until non-FOX outlets are forced to come crawling individually to the White House to regain access, and the price will be to provide 100% favorable coverage to Trump. (and to attack Democrats all the time).

And Trump won't need them at all anymore should he win reelection.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Dems are getting smart, getting tough, and getting real about taking back state legislatures in 2020, finally getting their act together with a multi-state, multi-million dollar projects to flip battleground states like Michigan and NC back to blue at the local level.

Two groups, Arena and Future Now Fund, are planning to spend $7 million to try to flip GOP-controlled state legislatures in Florida, Arizona, Michigan and North Carolina.

“If you look at where the important states are, the places most people are watching are the Electoral College to secure the White House,” said Daniel Squadron, co-founder of the Future Now Fund. “But the truth is that when you talk about the impact of 2020, electoral control of the state legislatures is critical.”

The organizations said their funding represents “the largest coordinated-side commitments to date in North Carolina, Michigan and Florida for the 2020 cycle.”

Under former President Barack Obama, Democrats lost more than 1,000 state and congressional seats. The devastating losses left many Democratic activists and insiders believing that they needed to do more to focus beyond the White House.

“That’s the lesson the radical right has taught us over the last 45 years,” said Ravi Gupta, co-founder of Arena. “So much of what is going on depends on the states.”

Arena and Future Now Fund are expecting to place more than 100 staffers in the four targeted states, hold five-day training academies for 150 aides in each of them, and provide funding to candidates and related groups. Most of their funds will be raised at the grassroots level, the liberal groups said.

Leaders for the groups said they chose those four states in particular for the joint project for several reasons: They think Democrats are poised to win them back, and that each state has faced voter rights or redistricting issues, such as gerrymandering in North Carolina.

They also want to address specific issues in those places, including low teacher pay in Arizona and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. And they are looking to take power in the states ahead of redistricting following the 2020 Census. The GOP prioritized its redistricting efforts to great success after the last Census, and the two groups are looking to emulate those results.

Frankly this is a project that should have started in 2008.  And I see Michale Bloomberg and Tom Steyer having both collectively spending close to $200 million on their ego runs for President when they could have instead pitched in just half of that total and made an enormous impact for Democrats.

Of course, Steyer and Bloomberg don't really care about local Democrats, so they wont lift a finger.

I'm just sad that it took so long for Dems to get their crap together on this.

Enemies Of The People, Con't

The Trump regime has officially blacklisted Bloomberg News and will no longer allow them any press credentials after the news outlet chose to distance itself from owner Michael Bloomberg by not targeting his Democratic primary rivals.

President Donald Trump’s campaign said Monday it will no longer give credentials to Bloomberg News reporters to cover campaign events because of coverage “biases,” an accusation that the news organization rejects.

The decision comes a week after the news service’s founder, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, announced he was seeking the Democratic nomination for president. And Bloomberg News, which the former New York City mayor founded in 1990, said it would not investigate him or his Democratic rivals but would continue to probe the Trump administration, as the sitting government.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale called it a troubling decision to “formalize preferential reporting policies.” He said Bloomberg reporters would no longer be credentialed to cover campaign events until the policy is rescinded.

“As President Trump’s campaign, we are accustomed to unfair reporting practices, but most news organizations don’t announce their biases so publicly,” Parscale said.

Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait said the accusation of bias couldn’t be further from the truth.

“We have covered Donald Trump fairly and in an unbiased way since he became a candidate in 2015 and will continue to do so despite the restrictions imposed by the Trump campaign,” he said.

The Trump campaign’s action illustrates the difficult position Bloomberg’s candidacy has imposed on the news organization.

By saying reporters could not investigate Bloomberg or his Democratic rivals, some critics have said this would prevent the news organization from doing in-depth reporting on the campaign. Bloomberg officials say it’s a position they’ve navigated before when he was mayor.

“This is my nightmare come true,” said Kathy Kiely, a University of Missouri journalism professor who quit as Bloomberg political director when he was considering a run for the 2016 presidential nomination.

Journalists at Bloomberg would have been better served if he had made clear that he was stepping away from his company for the campaign and said that he — and any candidate for president — was fair game for any kind of stories that Bloomberg News reporters could dig up, she said.

“It’s unfortunate that this is creating a perception that this is how journalism works, that journalists are manipulated by their bosses,” she said.

I would even side against Bloomberg on this in a universe where Donald Trump didn't have FOX News as his own personal state television network.

Brad Parscale screaming about biases is pretty much like the national rattlesnake lobby complaining that scorpions might be a health hazard.  This is just bullying and bad faith nonsense, and the Bloomberg people should absolutely call out the Trump regime on it.

Last Call For Too Many Cooks

And former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg is making good on his threat to upend the Democratic 2020 primary by filing to enter the Alabama primary tomorrow.

Michael R. Bloomberg is actively preparing to enter the Democratic presidential primary and is expected to file paperwork this week designating himself as a candidate in at least one state with an early filing deadline, people briefed on Mr. Bloomberg’s plans said.

Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman, has been privately weighing a bid for the White House for weeks and has not yet made a final decision on whether to run, an adviser said. But in the first sign that he is seriously moving toward a campaign, Mr. Bloomberg has dispatched staffers to Alabama to gather signatures to qualify for the primary there. Though Alabama does not hold an early primary, it has a Friday deadline for candidates to formally enter the race.

Should Mr. Bloomberg proceed with a campaign, it could represent a seismic disruption in the Democratic race. With his immense personal wealth, centrist views and close ties to the political establishment, he would present a grave and instantaneous threat to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has been struggling to raise money and assemble a ideologically moderate coalition.

But Mr. Bloomberg could also reshape the race in other ways, intensifying the Democrats’ existing debates about economic inequality and corporate power, and offering fodder to the party’s rising populist wing, led by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who contend that the extremely rich already wield far too much influence in politics. Mr. Bloomberg has repeatedly expressed discomfort with certain policies favored by both Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders.

Howard Wolfson, a close adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, said on Thursday that the former mayor viewed President Trump as an “unprecedented threat to our nation,” and noted Mr. Bloomberg’s heavy spending in the 2018 midterm elections and this week’s off-year races in Virginia. Mr. Bloomberg, he said, has grown uneasy about the existing trajectory of the Democratic primary.

“We now need to finish the job and ensure that Trump is defeated — but Mike is increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned to do that,” Mr. Wolfson said. “If Mike runs he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist.”

Once again, Bloomberg has no shot whatsoever:

Mr. Bloomberg will have to move quickly if he is to compete in a serious way for the Democratic nomination. Beyond Alabama, several other states have filing deadlines in quick succession, including New Hampshire, with its crucial early primary. While he has maintained a cluster of high-powered advisers in New York, he would have to build a campaign from zero in the early primary and caucus states, and it may be difficult for him to qualify for the two remaining debates this year.

In a Democratic race, Mr. Bloomberg would face a battery of complicated questions about his political ideology and governing record. He has been a vigorous advocate for core liberal causes, like gun control and battling climate change. But as mayor Mr. Bloomberg also championed police searches that targeted black and Latino men; in an interview last fall, he defended his administration’s stop-and-frisk policing strategy and also expressed skepticism about the #MeToo movement.

He's just there to hurt Biden.

Another Hat Does NOT Land In The Ring

Notable this week: the number of people saying they will not enter the 2020 race for the Democratic nomination.  First up not running: former Obama AG Eric Holder.

Holder, who was President Barack Obama’s first attorney general, said he will instead continue his work to end gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing legislative districts for a political advantage.

“Though I will not run for president in 2020, I will continue to fight for the future of our country through the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and its affiliates,” Holder said in an op-ed published Monday in The Washington Post.

“Our fight to end gerrymandering is about electing leaders who actually work for the interests of the people they are supposed to represent. I will do everything I can to ensure that the next Democratic president is not hobbled by a House of Representatives pulled to the extremes by members from gerrymandered districts,” Holder said.

Good for Holder.  He knows he'll be far more effective fighting GOP voter suppression in the courts than running for 2020, and I applaud his choice.  We'll never get the Voting Rights Act fixed that the Roberts Court gutted a few years ago without winning the Senate and keeping the House, and that means both fixing gerrymandering and keeping Democratic senators in the Senate, bringing us to our next non-contender, Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley.

In his announcement, Merkley said: "Over the last year I've weighed whether I can contribute more to the battle by running for Senate, or by running for president."

"I've reached the conclusion that the biggest impact I can have is here in the Senate."

The Oregon senator, who is considered a progressive, is a main proponent of banking regulation and has been one of the main forces behind the Wall Street reform bill.

Again, this is the right choice for Merkley.  He didn't have a shot at the White House, but he's been a bedrock-solid liberal senator where he's been needed.

We also need to get the 2020 field straightened out as soon as we can and get to work, and that means Hillary Clinton is making it clear that she will not run in 2020.  And yes, Clinton has said no several times before.

The pool of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates keeps expanding. But one name that won’t be in the mix is 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton.

The former secretary of state and US senator ruled out a 2020 White House bid in an interview with the local New York City television station News 12 on Monday.

“I’m not running,” she said, “but I’m going to keep working on and speaking and standing up for what I believe.”

Now watch, Clinton will say anything at all after this and it will be "Could Hillary be preparing a 2020 run?"

But finally, it means we have to put a stop to the dangerous, ego-driven third party nonsense of America's billionaires, and thankfully that now means Michael Bloomberg is out too as he laid out the case for why he won't run on Monday.

I know what it takes to run a winning campaign, and every day when I read the news, I grow more frustrated by the incompetence in the Oval Office. I know we can do better as a country. And I believe I would defeat Donald Trump in a general election. But I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field.
There is another factor that has weighed heavily on my mind: the likelihood that our biggest national problems will worsen over the next two years. With a leader in the White House who refuses to bring the parties together, it will be nearly impossible for Congress to address the major challenges we face, including climate change, gun violence, the opioid crisis, failing public schools, and college affordability. All are likely to grow more severe, and many of the president’s executive actions will only compound matters.

I love our country too much to sit back and hope for the best as national problems get worse. But I also recognize that until 2021, and possibly longer, our only real hope for progress lies outside of Washington. And unlike most who are running or thinking of it, I’m fortunate enough to be in a position to devote the resources needed to bring people together and make a big difference.

That just leaves one big question mark as to entering the race..and his name is Joe Biden.

We need to hear from him ASAP...

The Third Party Screw Job

With news that billionaire Michael Bloomberg is getting serious about entering the 2020 race as an independent, and with former Starbucks CEO and billionaire Howard Schultz still lurking in the shadows, it's time for a sobering reminder from my old friend Steve M that a Ross Perot-style independent run in 2020 would all but assure a second Trump term.

Dr. Rachel Bitecofer, a pollster and political science professor, published a New York Times op-ed last month called "Why Trump Will Lose in 2020" -- but that was before Howard Schultz began making noises about running as an independent. Dr. Bitecofer, who conducts polls for the Wason Center for Public Policy, alerts us to the results of Wason's latest survey, which suggests that a third-party run could turn a Democratic blowout into a Trump win.

The Wason Center survey of likely 2020 voters shows that, in a conventional two-party race, the Democratic Party nominee holds an 11-point advantage over Trump, 48%-37%, well outside the +/- 3.2 margin of error. However, when respondents are offered the option of an Independent candidate, a far different picture emerges. Under this scenario, the race becomes a statistical tie between Trump (34%) and the Democrat (32%). Fully 16% of likely voters indicate they would vote for the Independent candidate and another 16% report being undecided — up from 9% in the two-way contest.

... the Democrat loses five times more voters than Trump (16 points vs. 3 points). That is, for every voter who switches from Donald Trump to the Independent, five voters switch from the Democrat to the Independent. 

It's just one poll, but the numbers are bad.

The dropoff is quite extraordinary. In a two-person race, Trump gets 86% of the Republican vote; with an independent in the race, he's down to 78% -- an 8-point drop. The drop among Democratic voters, by contrast, is 23 points -- the Democratic candidate goes from 95% to 72%.

With no independent in the race, men go for Trump 44%-38%; add an independent and the numbers are 44%-20% (with 23% going independent) -- Trump doesn't lose any men, while the Democrat loses nearly half of his or her male supporters. And oddly, this isn't primarily a white phenomenon -- non-white support for the Democrat drops from 70% to 43% with an independent in the race.

And why wouldn't this be the case? The Democratic Party has a terrible brand. For years, Republicans have nationalized every election, portraying each contest as a one between pure evil -- the Democrats, along with their putative support network of radical college professors, Hollyweird celebrities, and effete soy boys -- and pure good. Democrats, by contrast, run against their opponents, or against the president of the United States when he's a Republican, but they never run against the Republican Party. And they don't run with pride in being Democrats -- swing-district 2018 House candidates downplayed their party affiliation; Bernie Sanders allied himself with the Democrats in 2016 only long enough to run for president, and is doing the same thing agin this year. Even Democrats mock the Democrats. I mock the Democrats. So it makes sense that a significant percentage of anti-Trump voters would blow off the Democratic Party if given an alternative. 

Again, this is one poll, but it would be a disaster for Democrats if either Schultz or Bloomberg ran (or god help us, both).  Both men have to be aware.  Both men have to see that their stated goal of getting rid of Trump would only be destroyed by entering the race.

I expect ego will drive one of them, if not both, to enter anyway.

Bloomberg Off The Rose, Con't

If billionaire former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is aiming for 2020, he sure is picking an expensive way to enter the race.

Former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced Sunday he is giving a record $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins University to support student financial aid at his alma mater and make its admissions process “forever need-blind.”

The gift, believed to be the largest private donation in modern times to higher education, is a landmark in a growing national movement to make elite universities more accessible to students from low- to middle-income families.

It will enable the private research university in Baltimore to eliminate loans from financial aid packages for incoming students starting next fall, expand grants for those in financial need and provide relief to many current undergraduates who had previously taken out federal loans to pay their bills.

In years past, Hopkins President Ronald J. Daniels said, the university struggled to achieve its goal of welcoming all talented students regardless of their means or backgrounds.

“Our dedicated financial aid endowment was simply too small,” Daniels said. “Now, as a consequence of Mike Bloomberg’s extraordinary gift, we will be fully and permanently need-blind in our admissions and be able to substantially enrich the level of direct assistance we provide to our undergraduate students and their families.”

Bloomberg, who graduated from Hopkins in 1964, wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times that his gift is intended to support the idea that opportunities should be based on merit and not wealth. “This will make admissions at Hopkins forever need-blind; finances will never again factor into decisions,” he wrote.

With the donation, the 76-year-old businessman and politician underscored his philanthropic commitment at a moment when he is mulling a run for the presidency in 2020 as a Democrat. (He also has been a Republican and an independent in his political career.) Bloomberg had given $6.4 billion to education and other causes before Sunday’s announcement.

Now, his total lifetime giving to Hopkins alone will exceed $3.3 billion.

It's hard to be mad at a guy who has given away more than six billion dollars to charity.  It however does not qualify him for President, Zandar said, momentarily forgetting that the current guy in the Oval Office is a corrupt mobbed-up game show host.

Still, it's good that Bloomberg is doing this.  It's bad that he's running for President.  Two separate things.  The previous billions still didn't make him a good presidential candidate then, it doesn't now either.

The Bloom(berg) Already Off The Rose

Not that former NYC GOP Mayor Michael Bloomberg ever had a White House shot in 2020 running as a Republican, let alone as an Independent spoiler to split off the anti-Trump vote, but the notion that he could ever run as a Democrat in 2020 is laughable to the point of dark comedy.

“It’s impossible to conceive that I could run as a Republican — things like choice, so many of the issues, I’m just way away from where the Republican Party is today,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “That’s not to say I’m with the Democratic Party on everything, but I don’t see how you could possibly run as a Republican. So if you ran, yeah, you’d have to run as a Democrat.”

Mr. Bloomberg said he had no specific timeline for deciding on a presidential run: “I’m working on this Nov. 6 election, and after that I’ll take a look at it.” 

There is considerable skepticism among Democratic leaders, and even some of Mr. Bloomberg’s close allies, that he will actually pursue the presidency, because he has entertained the idea fruitlessly several times before, and shown little appetite for the rough-and-tumble tactics of traditional partisan politics. A campaign would require him to yield his imperial stature as a donor and philanthropist, and enter a tumultuous political and cultural climate that could make him a highly incongruous candidate for the Democratic nomination.

Though he has received a hero’s welcome from Democrats for his role in the midterms, Mr. Bloomberg is plainly an uncomfortable match for a progressive coalition passionately animated by concern for economic inequality and the civil rights of women and minorities.

In the interview Friday — his first extended comments on his thinking about a 2020 presidential run — Mr. Bloomberg expressed stubbornly contrary views on those fronts. He criticized liberal Democrats’ attitude toward big business, endorsing certain financial regulations but singling out a proposal by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to break up Wall Street banks as wrongheaded. He also defended his mayoral administration’s policy of stopping people on the street to search them for guns, a police tactic that predominantly affected black and Latino men, as a necessary expedient against crime.

And while Mr. Bloomberg expressed concern about allegations of sexual misconduct that have arisen in the last year, he also voiced doubt about some of them and said only a court could determine their veracity. He gave as an example Charlie Rose, the disgraced television anchor who for years broadcast his eponymous talk show from the offices of Mr. Bloomberg’s company. 

“The stuff I read about is disgraceful — I don’t know how true all of it is,” Mr. Bloomberg said of the #MeToo movement. Raising Mr. Rose unprompted, he said: “We never had a complaint, whatsoever, and when I read some of the stuff, I was surprised, I will say. But I never saw anything and we have no record, we’ve checked very carefully.” 

Mr. Bloomberg said the media industry was guilty of not “standing up” against sexual misconduct sooner, but declined to say whether he believed the allegations against Mr. Rose. “Let the court system decide,” he said, while acknowledging that the claims involving Mr. Rose might never be adjudicated in a legal proceeding. 

Mr. Rose, 76, has been accused by numerous women of unwanted and coercive sexual behavior, including claims that he groped female subordinates and exposed himself to them. He was fired by both CBS, where he hosted a morning show, and PBS, which broadcast the program “Charlie Rose,” which Mr. Rose recorded in the Bloomberg office. Bloomberg TV also terminated an arrangement that allowed it to rebroadcast Mr. Rose’s show. 

“You know, is it true?” Mr. Bloomberg said of the allegations. “You look at people that say it is, but we have a system where you have — presumption of innocence is the basis of it.”

And so he's against #MeToo, he's against Black Lives Matter, and he's pro-Wall Street.  He's the living caricature of what Democratic Socialists think all Democrats are, and what actual Democrats know Republicans really are at heart.

Who the hell is Bloomberg's constituency, employees of Bloomberg, Inc?

Hard, hard pass.  A pass on this clown so hard that diamonds couldn't scratch it.

NY Times?  Let's not ever seriously mention this fool as a "Democrat" again, shall we?

The Case For His Successor

Last night several big names in the Democratic Party (and for some unfathomable reason, Michael Bloomberg) laid out their respective cases for Hillary Clinton's election at the Democratic National Convention in Philly, including arguably Clinton's most powerful proponent, the current POTUS himself.

President Barack Obama painted an optimistic picture of America's future and offered full-throated support for Hillary Clinton's bid to defeat Republican Donald Trump in a speech that electrified the Democratic National Convention.

He urged Democrats to enable Clinton to finish the job he started with his election nearly eight years ago in a rousing speech that capped a night when party luminaries took to the stage to contrast the party's new standard-bearer with Trump, whom they portrayed as a threat to U.S. values.

"There has never been a man or woman, not me, not Bill - nobody more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States," Obama said to cheers at the Philadelphia convention on Wednesday night.

Hillary Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, will accept the party's White House nomination in a speech to end the convention on Thursday night. The election is on Nov. 8.

Her address will be closely watched to see if she can make a convincing argument for bringing about change while still representing the legacy of Obama, who is ending his second term with high approval ratings.

"Tonight, I ask you to do for Hillary Clinton what you did for me. I ask you to carry her the same way you carried me," Obama said. When he finished, she joined him on stage where they hugged, clasped hands and waved to the crowd.

I saw this speech and as far as Obama speeches go it was pretty decent, not among his top ten by any means, but a good one nonetheless.  But he did what he set out to do, which was to endorse Clinton as someone who can and should follow him, and to go after Donald Trump, hard.

In fact that was the theme of the night. VP Joe Biden, Clinton running mate Sen. Tim Kaine, and retiring Senate minority leader Harry Reid all ripped Donald Trump to bits. Even Bloomberg got in on the festivities, declaring that as a New Yorker, he knew a con when he saw one.

All in all it was a good night for the Dems.  We'll see what Clinton herself has to say tonight.

The Bloomberg Is Off The Rose

As I mentioned this morning, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is officially not going to get into the race for the White House as a third party spoiler, and the NY Times received some of Bloomberg's research on the run.  It's interesting stuff indeed.

Bloomberg's advisers thought he had a real shot as the third party alternative in a Trump v Sanders matchup:

Amazing.  Bloomberg's team thought he would win the Upper Midwest with the exception of Minnesota, while utterly breaking Trump in the South, with Bloomberg somehow being competitive in both Texas and California and being in position to get to 270 win easily.

But the reality of a Clinton/Trump matchup apparently forced him to fold his cards completely.

The scenario here is that Bloomberg weakens both sides to the point where nobody gets to 270, and then the GOP-controlled House would decide the election for Trump.

Note the maps come from our old friend Doug Schoen, which means they are vastly overstating Bloomberg's chance of winning any state whatsoever.  The actual reality is that much like Perot's run two decades ago, Bloomberg wouldn't win a single state, but would split a vast number of states that would make for a different swing state group.  That chaos would almost certainly benefit Trump as well, allowing him to win states that he wouldn't have a shot at.

The upshot would be the same: Bloomberg would create a path for President Trump.  Luckily that's not something that he wants to be remembered for, so for now, we're being spared his ego.

Centrist Dalek Horror Theater Presents: The Schoening

As the New Hampshire primaries get underway today, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirms this week that he is considering entering the 2016 presidential race as an independent, something that made the rounds as a trial balloon two weeks ago.  Now however Bloomberg himself is saying he's considering making the jump.

The billionaire media mogul and three-time former New York mayor told Financial Times in an interview published Monday that he is “looking at all the options.”

Fellow New York billionaire Donald Trump has been leading polls on the Republican side for months, and Hillary Clinton only narrowly escaped Iowa with a victory over a self-described "democratic socialist." Bloomberg, who is considering running as an independent, said Americans deserve “a lot better.”

Bloomberg has set a March deadline to determine whether he will run, and should he decide yes, he told the FT he would have to begin getting his name on ballots next month. He has signaled he could spend at least a billion dollars of his own money to sustain a campaign, according to a New York Times report citing anonymous sources briefed on his deliberations.

That's not the funny part.  The funny part is who's advising him.

Bloomberg's pollster, Douglas Schoen, outlined the case for his boss's potential White House bid in an op-ed last week for the Wall Street Journal.

Pundits are missing a large group of centrist voters who opt out of partisan primaries, Schoen argued, pointing to the low turnout in Iowa.

“That’s the new silent majority: the millions of Americans who don’t participate in Democratic or Republican primaries. They are equally as fed up with the status quo, but they have a different approach to problem-solving and different policy prescriptions than those on the ideological extremes,” Schoen wrote.

That has created an opportunity for someone to mount an independent run, he argued:

“Who fits the bill? Michael Bloomberg, a centrist with a clear (and arguably unique) record in business as an entrepreneur and in politics as a three-term mayor of New York. Mr. Bloomberg is a fiscally prudent conciliator who advances pro-growth policies and takes tough stands."

That's right, the guy running Bloomberg's numbers is none other than our old friend Doug Schoen, the obnoxious No Labels/Americans Elect centrist grifter that warned Obama could never win re-election in 2012 and that Hillary had to primary him, that Obama had to champion the Simpson/Bowles Catfood Commission, that the Democrats were the real extremists, that Obama had to become a right-wing Democrat in order to attract Tea Party votes, that Trump should have gotten into the race in 2012 as in independent, and my personal favorite, that Barack Obama should have dropped out of the 2012 race completely for the good of America.

It looks like Doug has found his Trojan Horse to sink the Democrats and get his massive austerity cuts by splitting votes in favor of the GOP in Bloomberg, so if there was any doubt that a Bloomberg run is more Nader than Perot, the fact that Doug Schoen is involved should have you running for the exits.

The Centrist Daleks are baaaaaack!

Ross's Revenge: The Bloombergining

So question for the assembled: who would be hurt more by a Michael Bloomberg third party Perot run, the GOP or the Dems?

Michael R. Bloomberg has instructed advisers to draw up plans for an independent campaign in this year’s presidential race. His advisers said he is galled by Donald J. Trump’s dominance of the Republican field, and troubled by Hillary Clinton’s stumbles and the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on the Democratic side.

Mr. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has in the past contemplated running for the White House on a third-party ticket, but always concluded he could not win. A confluence of unlikely events in the 2016 election, however, has given new impetus to his presidential aspirations.

Mr. Bloomberg, 73, has already taken concrete steps toward a possible campaign, and has indicated to friends and allies that he would be willing to spend at least $1 billion of his fortune on it, according to people briefed on his deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss his plans. He has set a deadline for making a final decision in early March, the latest point at which advisers believe Mr. Bloomberg could enter the race and still qualify to appear as an independent candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.

He has retained a consultant to help him explore getting his name on those ballots, and his aides have done a detailed study of past third-party bids. Mr. Bloomberg commissioned a poll in December to see how he might fare against Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton, and he intends to conduct another round of polling after the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 9 to gauge whether there is indeed an opening for him, according to two people familiar with his intentions.

Mr. Bloomberg’s aides have sketched out one version of a campaign plan that would have the former mayor, a low-key and cerebral personality, deliver a series of detailed policy speeches, backed by an intense television advertising campaign that would introduce him to voters around the country as a technocratic problem-solver and self-made businessman who understands the economy and who built a bipartisan administration in New York.

On the surface, I would think that Bloomberg would run as a gun-control, abortion-friendly moderate Republican, but I really can't decide if that would draw off more Stepford Wives Republicans sick of Trump/Cruz, or Lefty Dudebro Dems who hate Hillary and are eyeing Trump because of his billionaire status.

The Bloomberg numbers could change wildly if Cruz or Sanders are candidates rather than Clinton or Trump, too.  I dunno.

I know the last time this happened back in '92, Democrats won pretty handily, but that was against incumbent Poppy Bush, and both parties lost millions of votes to Ross Perot, Clinton just lost fewer.

Poppy's numbers were about where Obama's are now, upper 40's/low 50's too.  I don't know, I'd need more data.  My gut tells me Bloomberg would split the "time for a change from the Democrats" vote and Hillary would win, but I dunno if that would happen.

What say you guys?