"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."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/us/politics/mi…
How will this affect the primary?
| +96 | Are you “less ambitious” for having long term goals outside of NYC | 24 | 1d | |
| +45 | Interviews Are So Fake | 28 | 56m | |
| +33 | 2024 UK Election - Tories finished? | 21 | 4h | |
| +29 | Being Christian in investment banking | 14 | 1d | |
| +25 | Non-Competes Banned | 24 | 1h | |
| How do I become Sigma | 14 | 2h | ||
| +19 | ADHD ! | 4 | 4h | |
| +19 | Moelis has the cutest Analysts? | 4 | 1d | |
| +18 | Best NYC neighborhood for single 30M | 12 | 2d | |
| +16 | Underage intern, drinking? | 7 | 1d |
Career Resources
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
Why the fuck does anyone want this job? This guy could fuck off forever and he wants this shitty job?
Money is fleeting and goes away when you're dead. Power and Legacy live on. Don't conflate the two
That's fine but the job still sucks.
well either way you're still dead
and in x years this power/legacy will cease to exist
His children too. they will inherit.
Bloomberg winning the Dem nomination is laughable.
Also my biggest fear from Trump being elected has started. The corporate world taking more and more shots at being the head public official. Moving more and more towards entirely being the United Corporations of America.
You sound extremely confused on which direction the country is headed.
I personally think that it is good and healthy that some (the more the better) politicians are from business backgrounds as they know how to run things, make decisions and aren’t here just to be re-elected by ensuring their voters are happy for them and be lifers. Politics should be seen as serving your country for up to 10 years, bring new ideas to the table but not be a lifetime thing.
Big fan of some of the Nordics in that sense (see Denmark) - there is a reasons why these countries are doing so well both financially and living quality/happiness wise.
They are also not diverse and are quite insular. But no need to mention that part, doesn’t fit the narrative
Bloomies gonna get skullfucked. A short Jewish man with a nanny complex has no appeal outside of NYC let alone the party that hates "Old, White men". He's never had a five-minute conversation with a non-cosmopolitan American. He's gonna go to Iowa and say some shit like I'll outlaw Circle K Polar Pops by EO and get the shit booed out of. He's gonna get a dose of reality real quick.
he'll probably be the guy to come out against corn subsidies
Lol no way in hell will these lefties go for Bloomberg.
You may not be familiar with Bloomberg's history and how dems view his politics. The extreme left might not vote for him but the majority of dems would seriously consider voting for him. I think that most moderate dems consider him to be more of a democrat than a republican. Even though he was a republican mayor, he was a democrat for the majority of his life. I do not think his success in business and wealth is a negative for most dems. In fact, I think the dems view his previous accomplishments in a very positive way.
Does that mean he will get the nomination? I have no idea. It may be difficult to convince voters to change their minds and vote for another candidate at this point. It might be too late.
He wasn't a Republican mayor. He ran as a Republican to avoid the Dem primary. Then, upon election, immediately dropped the Republican label. His financial support has been almost uniformly to Democrats since leaving office.
Duplicate comment entered by mistake.
I think Bloomberg is seeing a gap in the anti-Warren camp on Wall Street, a place he is familiar with it. A man with his resources must be aware of some ground reality. Either he is too optimistic and thinks that he can use the gap in anti-Warren, anti-Sanders and pro-Wall Street clubs to get to the top job. Or, he is too pragmatic and understands that by just running, he is singlehandedly undermining the Warren & Sanders camp while not empowering the Trump camp.
Exactly. If you don't like Trump style but are not very fond of Warren policies you are kind of stuck. You'll probably end up relunctantly voting Trump because at the end of the day, your $$ are safer with him, nobody really cares about his scandals and BS.
In wealth management in Midwest. There are definitely a few hardline Never Trumpers, but overwhelmingly this is the sentiment of the people with money .Obviously I’m sure there is a skew pro-Trump in the south/Midwest compared to battleground and coasts, but i think most people have done largely what the dems told everyone to do when Slick Willy was getting BJ’s in the Oval: “Look the other way, it doesn’t relate to his presidential duties.”
Nonsense.
Faced with that choice, I would grit my teeth and pick Warren 10 out of 10 times. There's only so much domestic policy damage she could do in four years (she would never get her wealth tax passed in its current form or full on government healthcare - especially not in year 3 as she says she plans) whereas Trump is currently undermining our Democracy, cozying up to authoritarians, threatening America's relevance on the world stage, hurting people's wallets with his off the cuff trade wars, and being a general piece of shit.
It isn't even remotely close.
Why did he file for the Alabama primary? Would that not make him ineligible and loose delegates from the Iowa Caucus and other previous primaries.
Taxes
Michael = the goat
Michael "Leeroy Jenkins" Bloomberg
Bloomberg may end up running into the buzzsaw that is reality. America is not "fiscally conservative and socially liberal." It's exactly the opposite. Being in his bubble in NYC leads him to believe that there is some sort of silent majority that wants pro-market, fiscally responsible policies and aggressively liberal social policies. This is the exact opposite of reality.
Genuinely curious: what makes you say this?
I live in CA, so another "coastal bubble". Do you have any articles or data to show America being the opposite? Not trying to prove you wrong, really just curious and trying to learn.You would struggle to find many examples of a fiscal and economic conservative and social liberal being elected to national office. This has simply not happened in the modern age with any President. The American public hates taxes and loves spending, which is why we have a $23 trillion debt and $44 trillion unfunded entitlement liability due in the next 2-3 decades. The American public, in particular, is fiscally profligate. The U.S. is generally a free market economy, but we have many highly regulated industries--health care, housing, banking, insurance, education, energy. The American public is not as free market-oriented as I would like, and it is less market-oriented than the ostensibly socialist regimes of Northern Europe, according to analyses by right-leaning think tanks (Heritage, Cato).
On the other hand, the U.S. has a much more socially conservative orientation relative to Europe or Canada. We have more freedom of speech, more access to guns, in most cases more restrictions on abortion, no hate speech laws, and a lot of skepticism for political correctness, as well as far more religious people.
I posted this in another thread:![test](a href="https://images.theweek.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/screen_shot_2019-03-03_at_10.02.24_am.png?itok=2txPWUa2">https://images.theweek.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/scre…</a)
The two tribes of America are:
-economically mixed/social conservative
-pansexual genderfluid communist
That's it. Fiscally conservative and socially liberal is a tiny minority.
I guess you have convinced yourself that Bloomberg is not aware of the views outside of NYC. I am confident that your statement is false. He is a a highly intelligent person who ran a large corporation that does business across the US and the world.
Bloomberg's two primary issues are gun control and climate change, which rank near the bottom of the list of issues Americans care about. These issues would play horribly in the swing states.
He's certainly better than anyone else on the Democrat side....
lmfao who threw shit at this?
Seriously, anyone who thinks any of the current pack of candidates is better than Bloomberg, please state your candidate and tell us why. I'm amazed anyone thinks that.
Wasn't me, but probably someone who both disagreed with the statement and the matter-of-fact method in which it was delivered
I suppose he will be going after the Biden lane of the primary, although Buttigieg has been slowly creeping into it with his criticisms of Warren's plan.
This all looks a bit desperate though. There was a time to jump in. It isn't now.
I think the Virginian elections might have pushed him, no? Vs the current front runners (Warren & Sanders) he will stand alone as a moderate without the political baggage Biden comes with.
Weird that the growing popularity of a front-runner proposing a billionaire tax suddenly compels all these billionaires to find their patriotic duty for public service.
If he, Steyer, or Schultz actually cared about stopping Trump, they'd dump their millions into a SuperPAC for one of the top candidates, help fund voting restoration rights, and/or start a progressive media company to counter the Fox propaganda powerhouse. They care about their egos, and paying less in taxes, same as always.
Bloomberg won't get above 20% in a single state primary.
Correct. But I'm sure he also thinks he'd make the best President and that there's a gap that Biden is not filling that he could. I'm sure he sees Biden being Biden and thinks Warren and Sanders are too far left to beat Trump (whether that's the case or not, who knows).
Biden is slipping because he's too old and too far right for the likely electorate voting in the Democratic primary. Bloomberg is older than Biden, and further right.
Playing this out, the most likely outcome if Bloomberg stays in the race is he splits the moderate vote with Biden/Pete, Warren wins the nomination, and Trump gets re-elected.
Or, he could put $500mm behind Biden, Pete, or Booker, and help support a moderate ticket that could actually win the primary and general.
Yes, you are "center-left" now.
Riiight?! CNN, MSNBC, NBC, NYT, WaPo, every movie that comes out of Hollywood...it's not enough to counter the propaganda from this one cable network!!
Oh, also - Bloomberg, LP is actually a mass media company including a globally-syndicated TV network (in addition to magazines, radio stations, etc...)
There is absolutely no equivalent on the Left to the power and reach Fox News has on its viewers and voters who download 4 hours of Hannity/Dobbs/Carlson/Ingraham propaganda every night to receive their talking points of the week, where Dear Leader is rarely criticized, and anyone who dares do so is shouted off the network. Just this week, the morning show had a meltdown pretending Trump wasn't overwhelmingly booed at the UFC event last week. State media, full-on propaganda.
Would you really, ever, recommend to anyone to start a tv channel at this point in history? Just saying...I'm not even touching the political part yet.
Oh yeah, he will play very well in the MidWest...Soda bans, cigarettes, he even speaks Spanish!
Bloomberg I think correctly realizes that the leading Democratic candidates will get destroyed by Trump in the general election. Biden sounded mildly retarded when he was in his forties. Scary how incompetent he sounds now. E. Warren cannot win a general election. People like me will sit out when stuck between an ego maniac who is an embarrassment and someone who will annihilate my income/money with taxes.
Trump supporters will not sit out.
Bloomberg is sort of Goldilocks for me and many of the people I know. I think Buttigieg is quite good as well, however, the odds of an openly gay man being President won’t fly in middle America/swing states just yet. We’ve made a lot of progress in gay rights, but not that much. Booker would have an ok chance against Trump, but it seems difficult to imagine he gets the nomination. I feel like Booker and Buttigieg are running for VP at this point.
...but polls show that all major dems would beat trump in a general election. Elizabeth Warren is a shrewd politician and my guess is that she would run closer to center during the general election.
I’m not sure older Dems or minorities are as passionate about Warren as young white women. Union voters who used to vote Dem almost uniformly have been divided by Trump and Warren won’t win any of them back.
Don’t ask me for evidence as this is largely conjecture and I don’t feel like doing research. I just don’t think the leading Dems have a good chance against Trump, especially Warren and Biden. They are losers.
Bloomberg is a winner. Winners win and losers lose.
Thread title is Fake News, nothing is official yet.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/10/michael-bloomberg-2020-poll-06…
Poll: Bloomberg's potential run is a flop with voters so far
Can't wait for the debate. Trump shows up with a Big Gulp cup in hand, and a thousand supporters in the seats, each with a Big Gulp cup.
Not sure Bloomberg can win this late but he has a better shot than any other democrat. I still think Trump probably gets re-elected but MB's appeal carries enough weight to at least make 2020 interesting. He could grab a big chunk of votes from moderates who like Trump policy but don't necessarily like him. Maybe that only represents a small portion of the vote--like some have argued here--but in my own conversations it seems to come up a lot. I think that voter tranche will be significant if Bloomberg can capture it.
The polling doesn't say that at all
The polling numbers look terrible for him and I am sure he is aware of this issue. Realistically, his entrance into the race, take votes from Biden and results in Warren getting the nomination. She would probably be the nominee anyway: with or without Bloomberg in the race.
It appears you are correct. Thanks for the info and fact check, have a banana.
I strongly believe that if the elections happened tomorrow, Trump would get re-elected. Even if Bloomberg does not make it all the way, I think he can add some depth to the dem conversations that has been full of speculations and populism.
This feels like it will be Warren vs Trump come 2020. They are wackadoo enough to reflect growing American craziness.
I just want caroline hyde or kailey leinz to be in the entourage so they get more facetime. hummina hummina
Bloomberg is way more competent than any of the bozos currently running. He needs to get off his gun obsession because swing state voters don't want to hear about it. He can win if he stops it with that shit.
I guess you are saying he should be dishonest and suddenly change his views on gun control. Don't we have enough dishonest politicians? If he changes his views on gun control, liberal thinkers may not vote for him.
He doesn't need to change his views, he should just de-prioritize it because you do what you need to do in order to win. Also, this issue happens to be dramatically overblown. There's a lot to say on that point, but to keep it concise:
Once you adjust gun deaths for things that probably shouldn't count (e.g. suicide is debatable as to whether you attribute it to guns . . and many gun deaths also come from cops) the numbers get really, really small
Then you also need to adjust out the gun deaths that wouldn't be targeted by any of the proposed gun control laws. For example if a murder is committed by someone who would've passed a background check, then the law wouldn't have prevented that murder. So now we go from really, really small to even smaller than that.
Then you also need to consider that among the gun deaths that would be targeted by the proposed laws, many would still happen. Especially with over 300 million guns currently in the US already.
Then there's the benefits of guns too, there's a book called More Guns Less Crime that goes into all this research and analysis about concealed carry reducing crimes and so forth.
So yeah after you make the right adjustments, the difference between having gun control and not having gun control . . people can reach different numbers but my estimate was like a dozen lives a year saved by gun control.
I don't have a problem with gun control. But I do have a problem with prioritizing this issue when new laws will save so few lives. To put a dozen lives in perspective: economists estimate that every 1% increase in unemployment costs 40,000 lives a year due to the various secondary effects of that. Auto accidents kill another 40,000, and obviously cancer and heart disease kill many times that.
So yeah, I think Bloomberg should get off it for strategic reasons and also because its the wrong thing to be talking about.
I'm surprised to see comments supporting Warren on here. I don't know how anyone who knows anything could support Warren.
Recent example of something she said: "When private equity firms acquire companies, suck out all the value they can, and walk away rich—leaving workers, their families, and their communities suffering with the consequences—it’s legalized looting. I have a plan to end it."
I mean seriously guys? Never mind that it's an attack on the finance industry; I don't care at all about that.
How about just the sheer stupidity of the comment? How and why would you "end" private ownership of companies? Or how about the absurd notion that a private equity firm can successfully destroy value while still getting rich on a consistent basis? Who are these sellers who are getting ripped off again and again, selling companies to PE for a fraction of true value so that the PE firm can strip the company and get rich? Please, Senator Pocahontas, tell me where I can find these easy-to-loot companies so that I too can make a killing.
No concept of value or economics whatsoever. It's beyond stupid. I expect some people (high school dropouts, art history majors, etc) to fall for her bullshit but didn't expect to see it here on WSO.
Except at no time has Warren said she will end private equity ownership. If you'd have taken the time to read her policy proposal (which you clearly have not done) she has suggested a series of measures to regulate some of the behavior she views as ill-advised, such as: - prioritize worker pay and benefits in the seniority of distributions in the event of a bankruptcy (the horror!) - ban dividends for the first two years of company ownership (gasp!) - require funds to disclose fees and returns to potential LPs (can you imagine!) - close the carried interest loophole (something noted socialist President Donald Trump has pledged to do as recently as six months ago!) - hold firms liable for debt obligations undertaken by portcos (this is the only one I take issue with, and yet a sponsor using 2x of LP equity with 6x of unitranche debt leaves them with no "skin in the game" and a giant moral hazard.
I hear ya buddy. I'm amazed there's a single person on this forum that can fall for Trump's daily conman bullshit tornado, but that's half this site now.
Her quote speaks for itself, as does the obvious stupidity in virtually everything she says.
She's good at sounding all wonky and using big words to fool people into thinking her proposals are actually sensible. She knows better. I thought my fellow WSO'ers knew better too.
Most Americans are economically center at best. Seriously, economic libertarianism is not really popular at all outside of some circles (circles that overlap with certain social classes that Americans increasingly hate). The main divide is social issues and the future of American politics is tribal.
Nobody wants a neoliberal corporatist because this country has been run by those people since FDR died, and people (both left and right) are fed up. The US establishment is in for a reckoning. They're lucky they haven't gotten the 1792 treatment already.
Someone like Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush will never be elected president.
I'm as big a critic as anyone of the establishment, but let's be real--this is the richest, most successful nation in the history of mankind. There are a lot of keyboard warriors, but nobody is going to rise up against a ruling class that presides over vast wealth and an incredible quality of life. The French Revolution was evil and disgusting but fully understandable as there was vast and grinding poverty responding to a rich monarchy that didn't act like it cared.
That's a bold statement to make right in a time when Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the two most popular politicians in America.
People don't like how the future looks. Whether you're on the left or right, there's a subset of both sides that's very uncomfortable with it.
Obama and Trump both had great basic economic numbers (GDP and especially unemployment). But people are smart enough to know that it's not this quarter or year that matters, its the next several decades. And that doesn't look good at all, compared to the expectations people were raised to have. Consider a few basics:
We all grew up with the idea that your wage income will grow steadily over time; you'll start at an entry level salary and then it just goes up from there. Is that still a common assumption for young adults today? I suspect not. I sense a lot more uncertainty, fear and competitiveness about the need to position oneself for long term success. More grad school for example, despite higher entry-level incomes; how many more will want to invest in grad school when a softer economy hits? College grads have very low confidence today that they've done enough to position themselves, and people don't readily assume their income will naturally increase.
We all grew up with the idea that savings will build wealth because it will earn long term returns. We were told that if you want to be safe and buy bonds, you'll get 4-5% and if you've got the stomach for some movements in the stock market, you'll make even more. Does anyone feel that way today? Stock market returns have been great in recent years but there's a strong view that this has been a manipulation by central bank money printing and pulling future returns forward to today. Talk to any institutional manager (I talk to many regularly) and they are all scared to death about putting more money into equity markets today. Meanwhile, bond yields are total shit. Anyone who was rich enough to bet big on the market early this decade has received a huge windfall; everyone else who was working to save up to get to this point today where they'd start earning passive income: kinda screwed in the opinion of most.
I'll stop there. Long story short, I think there was belief in a "social contract" of sorts that if you are a reasonably smart and able-bodied American who more or less does the right shit, you're more or less guaranteed a certain level of safety and comfort. And I think that belief is rapidly going away. I think the willingness to change out the ruling class is quite high on both sides, because many people (for their own separate reasons) don't like the path we're on.
Corrupti eligendi a soluta rem et. Veniam corrupti corporis ea in porro. Atque rerum consequatur reprehenderit at aliquam. Omnis reiciendis dolorum eum eveniet esse.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Ducimus quod dolorem totam sequi molestias labore. Aut tenetur nihil corporis nihil dolorem similique voluptatem. Et et omnis modi nisi quae.
Harum rerum quo quia consequuntur odio sit nostrum neque. Repudiandae ullam corporis consectetur ipsum magnam mollitia. Illum autem aliquam non expedita velit.
Laborum est rem qui enim. Architecto numquam laborum corrupti. Quia ipsum rerum suscipit fugiat qui optio et asperiores. Dolore ea esse aut placeat libero dolorem eligendi.
Quaerat voluptas aut voluptas occaecati fugiat. Voluptas facilis qui ad ullam quia eligendi delectus. Repudiandae consequatur eveniet quibusdam id exercitationem et.
Quaerat voluptatem quia quod ut odit totam aut. Culpa quis necessitatibus qui sit. Molestiae molestiae doloremque possimus debitis odio. Architecto ab exercitationem dolorem nihil debitis illo. Ipsa ipsam dolor veniam ducimus. Nam et blanditiis molestiae inventore velit omnis. Suscipit magni eum quisquam et.
Quaerat unde unde incidunt repudiandae delectus. Hic deleniti commodi fugit eius consectetur iusto. Culpa similique fuga recusandae molestias minima excepturi explicabo. Non et sunt consequuntur facere iure quia.
Deserunt ex modi molestiae distinctio aut id velit. Quidem modi officia atque ut inventore.
Sint vel nihil nulla omnis. Animi molestiae nemo ad dolorem hic adipisci est sit. Consequatur autem nobis similique in est occaecati. Excepturi dolores aut architecto sed. Dolor eligendi ab ab qui qui.
Quisquam et assumenda sunt praesentium ea ipsum corporis. Eum voluptas dolorem enim reiciendis quidem sint id. Tempora qui est eius molestiae hic omnis.
Tempore dicta repudiandae aut aut qui voluptatem mollitia rerum. Voluptatem aliquam ea eum iusto est adipisci voluptatibus. Incidunt sit dolore et odio. Voluptas ea sit est vel nam quis porro sunt.
Exercitationem et praesentium quasi aut dolorem adipisci. Perferendis veniam sint eum mollitia est. Voluptas et est voluptas molestiae blanditiis. Aut perspiciatis aut voluptas ab.