There's also a new Quinnipiac poll showing a lot of matchups:
So... the Dems should pick Sanders if they want to win? That can't be right!
Extra info:
If Bloomberg mounts a third party run, results are:
• Sanders and Trump tied 38 – 38 percent, with 12 percent for Bloomberg;
• Sanders tops Cruz 39 – 33 percent, with 14 percent for Bloomberg.
Posts
51 comments:
I don't think Bloomberg would be a good national candidate at this point. If he really cared about the country, he would use his money to fund a bipartisan ticket consisting of a competent Republican and Democrat.
Polls about a potential third party candidate have little meaning if the general public doesn't know much about them. Political junkies aside, Bloomberg isn't that well known outside of the metro NYC area.
Lacking real news, the press resorts to polls. So far, those polls aren't proving very accurate but actual reporting is hard work. So, what's the latest poll? Who's ahead in the horse race? What does it matter that the polls aren't accurate? Next week, there'll be another set of primaries. What do the polls say about them?
Don't forget that polls have a double error rate. The 5% plus minus only works 95 times out of a hundred.
If you read the Drudge headlines this morning, Hillary is the dead candidate walking.
HILLARY DRAMA: PRISIM GLASSES BACK ON
DOUBLE VISION
PHYSICIAN WARNS HILLARY SUFFERING POST-CONCUSSION SYNDROME...
VIDEO: Chelsea campaigns -- in a closet?
Tightening race rattles Nerves...
If loses Nevada 'shit will hit fan'...
Put Brock 'back in can'...
AFL-CIO Delays Endorsement...
Bernie has edge in general election...
Drone stalls Clinton entrance to rally...
OBAMA 'HOPE' POSTER DESIGNER FEELS THE BERN...
STARBUCKS Schultz Warns Turning Into 'Circus'...
Sanders can win. Especially if the R nominee is not Trump. I have made many comments about the way the establishment of both parties worked to divide the Tea Party from the Occupiers. There are plenty of deep cultural differences to work from, but there is a common enemy here, and if FDR could join with Stalin to defeat Hitler and Hirohito, the Tea Party can join with the Occupiers to overthrow this kakistocracy with which we are now cursed.
Watching the interviews with 18 year old Dr. Love in West Palm, Beach this morning reminded me of Ted Cruz. They both speak with the same measured attempt to imitate something that fools want to believe in.
I'm wondering how numbers shake out with independent runs by both Bloomberg and Trump versus, say, Rubio and Clinton.
What's up with Kasich up 8 points over Clinton? Was the sampling done entirely in Ohio? I don't believe he is well enough known to earn those poll numbers.
It would be funny of the traditional party establishments on both sides had their divide and conquer strategy blow up in their faces and the outcasts on both sides threw up Trump vs Sanders. That would be hilarious.
I am going to vote for Jeb in the Florida primary, but I am ready to vote for Trump or Sanders in the general, depending on what happens and how this all plays out.
I can't believe Sanders has risen to this level of seriousness. Yeah, I have said this before it boggles my mind. A guy in his 70s, not really a lawyer or intellectual, and sat in the senate without influence for the terms he was there and he is now presidential material because he uses the word 'corruption'. Give me a break. I say this as a neutral observer and I don't have a dog in this fight.
• Sanders and Trump tied 38 – 38 percent, with 12 percent for Bloomberg;
So we could see a 4-4 ruling by SCOTUS if we have a repeat of 2000,
Weirdest election season ever.
Once the public gets to know Bloomberg better, his numbers will shift, drawing more from Democrats than Republicans.
presidential material because he uses the word 'corruption'.
Like that scene in Big where the guy is incredulous in the meeting "He just uses the word "bug" and everybody's excited?"
People are sick of this crony capitalism. The people responsible for the crash of 2008 should have been left penniless, or at least taken the kinds of hits that Madoff's victims did. Instead we took the hit as a country and they are all still way richer than the people paying the taxes to pay off their mistakes. Plumbers and shop owners should be owning those houses in the Hamptons and apartments in Manhattan now. But nope, the same people are in them unaffected by the huge dislocation that they caused.
The right thing to do was to let them fail and take the consequences. No amount of regulation is going to keep people from working around them, but loss of everything, real risk, tends to focus the mind on the genuine consequences of risk. The right and the left agree that these people should have been paupered by their actions, but the Democrat/Republican establishment, stuck to the donors like piglets to a teat, protect them.
So yeah, Sanders can just say "corruption."
Maybe Ross Perot can run again. Or one of his sons or his wife should run since progeny and spouses think they are qualified to be president.
Bloomberg is way too short to be President. On a debate stage, everyone would see how Trump and Sanders tower over him. A pipsqueak billionaire nanny isn't going to get many votes
Polls standing alone are worthless. Trendlines are what counts—if anything does.
All of this bank and WallStreet hatred is touching, sweet actually. What a chance to alleviate oneself from the guilt of having borrowed what could not be repaid, of gorging at the cheap debt trough for cars and boats and luxury watches and shelves of frivolous junk. The banks made me do it, Ma. Wall Street made me do it. The mortgage banker made me borrow to buy the big house.
You might long for a world with tiny banks and jailed Wall Street executives but the tiny banks could not finance any real economic expansion and there would be new bodies in the corner offices.
Bernie Sanders is, of course, an economic illiterate taking his models from Nicaragua and Venezuela. Both countries, by the way, using big American banks and Wall Street to help guide them from their very deep ditches.
All of this bank and WallStreet hatred is touching, sweet actually. What a chance to alleviate oneself from the guilt of having borrowed what could not be repaid, of gorging at the cheap debt trough for cars and boats and luxury watches and shelves of frivolous junk. The banks made me do it, Ma. Wall Street made me do it. The mortgage banker made me borrow to buy the big house.
All I am saying is that if a bank makes it their business model to lend money to people for frivolous purchases that they have only the dimest hopes of ever paying back unless everything goes perfectly, those bankers and their investors should lose their money, and not stick us with the bill. Were there a real threat of getting stuck with the bill, the banks never would have made those loans in the first place, growth would have been slower, sure, but would have happened organically.
Sure Bernie Sanders used to have an "Anything for a Buck" business in Vermont, just like Larry, Daryl, and Daryl, and spent his spare time, which was undoubtedly plentiful, reading Marxism at used book stores in Burlington (Got that from Twitter, but it's probably true) but what we have now is no prize of a system.
Plus, like Obama, Garrison Keillor, and Bill Bryson, Bernie Sanders has a deep voice and that means he knows what he is talking about!
"The right thing to do was to let them fail and take the consequences."
That's what we did in 1929.
That's what we did in 1929
Oversimplify much?
tim in vermont:
It is quaint that you think FDR had to lower himself to work with Stalin. That's a good one. I am pretty sure FDR agreed with Uncle Joe about policy, right up to and including imprisoning people without due process.
Maybe he disagreed, at heart, with the murdering. Maybe.
Michael: All of this bank and WallStreet hatred is touching, sweet actually. What a chance to alleviate oneself from the guilt of having borrowed what could not be repaid, of gorging at the cheap debt trough for cars and boats and luxury watches and shelves of frivolous junk.
Yes, Michael, I'm sure that anyone the least bit critical of the current relation between government and financial institutions must be an irresponsible loser who went on a credit bender and doesn't want to pay the piper. No responsible, thrifty person need feel the slightest uneasiness at the current state of banking and finance in the world, or find accusations of corruption at the juncture of government and banking to be anything but the laughable delusions of economic illiterates. Thank God that, with all the trouble in the world, decent folk can at least rest easy about that.
The banks made me do it, Ma. Wall Street made me do it. The mortgage banker made me borrow to buy the big house.
The government made us do it, Ma. Honest, if it weren't for them liberals forcing us, against our better judgment, to make loans to all those unqualified borrowers, we wouldn't have touched that housing bubble with a ten-foot MBS. Market discipline for thee but not for me! Bail us out!
Bernie Sanders is, of course, an economic illiterate.
Why yes, he is. Ergo?
Here endeth the logic lesson from the shill, to the credulous:
Bernie Sanders is an economic illiterate, and there are people who are financially irresponsible, therefore Wall Street and her friends in Washington are immaculate and any eyebrows raised in that direction can't be anything but demagoguing to the economic illiterate for the purposes of fomenting class envy against Those Doing God's Work. QED.
Fortunately we are not yet completely reduced to a choice between commies and kleptos.
buster said...
"That's what we did in 1929."
The enduring myth of Coolidge as do-nothing rides again. Goldberg drove pencils through the heart of this beast just a few days ago:
"Bernie Sanders slandered Herbert Hoover, at least on Sanders’s terms. When asked what politicians he admired most, his first answer was FDR, ... [of whom he said]:
"... Herbert Hoover before that saying, no, we got to only worry about the deficit. So what if mass unemployment exists? So what if children are going hungry? That’s not the role of the government.
"And when FDR said, 'Yeah, it is,'....
". . . .
". . . I’m not a big fan of Herbert Hoover, but the notion that he was this heartless bastard cheapskate is total mythmaking. Even William Leuchtenburg, the dean of New Deal historians, has conceded that “almost every historian now recognizes that the image of Hoover as a ‘do-nothing’ president is inaccurate.” Indeed, the sad fact is that if Hoover had done nothing, the Great Depression probably would never have become Great in the first place. Doing nothing did wonders for the Depression of 1920–21. Hoover was the father of the New Deal (and Woodrow Wilson was the grandfather). As I’ve written many times before in this “news”letter, Hoover was a progressive Republican. Here’s how he defended himself at the GOP convention in 1932:
"Two courses were open to us. We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and to the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put that program in action. Our measures have repelled these attacks of fear and panic. . . . We have used the credit of the Government to aid and protect our institutions, both public and private. We have provided methods and assurances that none suffer from hunger or cold amongst our people. We have instituted measures to assist our farmers and our homeowners. We have created vast agencies for employment."
It is quaint that you think FDR had to lower himself to work with Stalin. That's a good one. I am pretty sure FDR agreed with Uncle Joe about policy, right up to and including imprisoning people without due process.
You are right, I should have said Winston Churchill.
"So... the Dems should pick Sanders if they want to win? That can't be right!"
Why not?
I can believe that Bernie would be a better candidate than Hillary. That's a *really* low bar. And he has no history. To most of America, he'd be whatever the mainstream media decided to portray him as for the campaign. That alone is worth ten points.
I obviously hope Bernie continues to ding up Hillary. He may even squeak by in Nevada. However, on Super Tuesday and in the Southern primaries (where there are lotsa blacks and very few old white hippie socialists), Bernie's gonna get creamed.
Hillary's not gonna get indicted, and she is gonna squash Bernie like a bug.
We may not like her, but she's a formidable candidate. Just sayin'
You know who is taking it in the ass with no K-Y? Savers! This is a wonderful state of affairs. Not to mention that it is inevitable that a large percentage of the people who have been forced to put their "savings" into SS are going to lose that "investment" as the plan goes bankrupt? Their crime will be financial responsibility. They will have provided for their own retirement, and therefore have a large part of their "savings" seized. They will call this "means testing Social Security" just like they call the rape of the savers "economic stimulus through low interest rates."
But the real problem is the people who bought boats with their "home equity." That's the root of it!
I hope that it is Hillary. I think then that the Rs will be able to keep the Senate. The Senate should naturally be Republican, just because of the fact that there are so many small states that get two Senators, same as California.
Agreed on Churchill.
I can believe that Bernie would be a better candidate than Hillary. That's a *really* low bar. And he has no history. To most of America, he'd be whatever the mainstream media decided to portray him as for the campaign. That alone is worth ten points
For those of us who actually remember and think about the Cold War, Bernie's pro-commie activities should be a deal-breaker. But there are so many millennial voters who have no recollection or knowledge at all about the USSR, plus a solid chunk of older voters who just don't care, that I think he has a real shot. Remember, the MFM carried Obama on their collective backs and they will do the same for Bernie.
Brush up your twelfth amendment
Start quoting it now
Who would you rather have a beer with? Hillary or Bernie? With Hillary, you have pay $250k for 60 minutes of drinking and she keeps both beers. With Bernie, someone you don't even know will pay for all the beer. But then his next beer drinking date is with someone you don't even know...
Tim in Vermont
The money used to bail the banks has been repaid with interest. Better returns than the shovel ready and earth saving "investments"
There were no money center banks having a "business model" of lending to deadbeats. None. Doesnt mean there were not plent of loans to deadbeats but that does not make such loans part of a model.
And it is generally agreed that allowing Lehman to fail was a mistake.
Shovel ready polling jobs.
@ Simon
My point (which is obscurely made) is that everyone lives with the consequences of economic collapse, not just those who caused it.
Tim in Vermont
Ah you have hit on a cunundrum. The banks, the evil banks, are being required to build up massive reserves so they won't fail. Huge regulatory costs heaped on top of volumes of rules curtail the rates that could be used to attract savers. Negative rates already a reality for large depositors. Way to go Dodd. Way to go Frank. Be very careful what you wish for.
There were no money center banks having a "business model" of lending to deadbeats. None. Doesnt mean there were not plent of loans to deadbeats but that does not make such loans part of a model.
Maybe not in a formal sense, no. But I was speaking figuratively, and if they were going to work every day to make loans to deadbeats, which they were, regardless of their stated intentions, then I was also speaking accurately. Literal mindedness is a terrible handicap, but a difficult one to overcome, I understand that.
Huge regulatory costs heaped on top of volumes of rules curtail the rates that could be used to attract savers.
I think it is more the printing of trillions of dollars that is devaluing savings. As per normal economic theory, I believe. I am no economist, I always choke on the backwards graphs, but I am pretty sure that is right.
tim in vermont
Savings are devalued in the way you describe when the printing of dollars results in inflation. We are not there yet. In fact, the FOMC struggles with the lack of inflation as a rationale to continue to raise rates. Venezuala would be an example of a country with a devalued currency. What a Bolivar bought in 2015 costs seven Bolivars today. In one year. Now that is a devalued currency.
The system you are describing is not exactly banking but rather trading. The traders had an insatiable need for product because the buyers of their bonds were aching for yields, some of which in the lower rated tranches were very tasty indeed. These buyers were all over the world sucking up the product manufactured by Wall Street. The traders were fed by mortgage product of various qualities but all of the issuances had high grade tranches as well as riskier pieces. In the collapse even the AAAs were drastically trimmed.
Most polls are bogus. Sample sizes are too small, the questions are often leading, and the results misinterpreted or misleading. Polls are for entertainment value. Some people (such as myself) sometimes lie to pollsters.
The only poll that counts is the one on election day.
Savings are devalued in the way you describe when the printing of dollars results in inflation.
Absent the trillions of fresh dollars, ordinary savings of ordinary people would command a higher rate in the marketplace. That money has to compete to be borrowed with all of the QE money. The competition drives down the lending value of that money because the economy is awash with money nobody needs to knock on Grandma's door and ask to borrow her $50K in savings at interest.
The traders had an insatiable need for product because the buyers of their bonds were aching for yields, some of which in the lower rated tranches were very tasty indeed.
That statement is as good a description of the banality of evil as you will ever see.
The traders were fed by mortgage product of various qualities but all of the issuances had high grade tranches as well as riskier pieces. In the collapse even the AAAs were drastically trimmed.
Apparently their math wasn't good enough for them to be in the business they were in. More likely their math was fine, it was their assumptions that got them.
TIM IN VERMONT
Ha, you are right about the assumptions. Muy faulty.
The purpose of QE (and I am not supporting this theory) was to provide ample capital in the system to get it moving again. With 2%+/- growth for the last six years it is questionable whether this was the right approach. QE was created to keep rates low which benefited those who made it out the other side of the recession with cash and expertise in one or more areas where cheap debt would be of benefit. Those without capital were stuck.
We have left a huge portion of society marooned from opportunity because this "recovery" did not include them. There are a number of reasons why but one theory has it that regulatory headwinds for business starts combined with the costs to small businesses of Obamacare and the regulatory burdens placed on the banks that discouraged small business lending. There are swaths of society that have not participated in the recovery and the reasons for that lie more in the lap of government than in that of the financial sector which, after all, does better if all are participating.
I personally believe that the vast majority of Americans have never recovered from the recession and, in fact, have lived in recession from 2008. This cohort has liquidity south of $3,000. They live one car wreck and one copay from disaster. Not good. Also not much different from before the recession so we may have a cultural as well as financial problem here.
Tim & Michael; A BIG part of the Fed's interest in "Quantitative Easing" was to keep THE GOVERNMENT'S OWN INTEREST PAYMENTS low. It's the ultimate form of insider trading; the government borrows a lot of money, and then another arm of the government suppresses interest rates to artificially limit the amount of interest they'll have to repay. If a Republican government had done anything like that, the peasants would have been at the White House with torches and pitchforks.
And Bill and Hillary are probably kicking themselves stupid because THEY didn't think of it.
The flip side of this is that interest rates are low for everybody. Back in the Reagan years, Ronnie got inflation cut back, and interest rates fell, and the (DNC Operatives with Bylines" were all up in arms about how seniors couldn't get by on the interest from their investments. And now that interest rates are near zero - and soon to be BELOW zero, if you read the financial blogs - the "press" couldn't care less, because there's a Dem in the White House. Of course, if a Republican wins in November, the "press" will be screaming bloody murder about it probably starting on January 22nd about how seniors can't live on their investments any longer....
Sanders v. Trump v. Bloomberg
This is how America dies.
Regarding the growing strength of Sanders I'm pleased to learn that Susan Sarandon does not vote with her vagina. The question of what organ Susan Sarandon does vote with is yet unanswered.
Noting the evident inability of a typical woman to clearly mark a paper ballot with her vagina, one must also admit that the lever on most old-fashioned voting machines is ideal for vaginal voting, though the operation of selection switches is best... ahem... handled by an agreeable penis, which is as it should be. Women's suffrage is good and proper as long as women rely on their menfolk to choose who and what to vote for.
So... the Dems should pick Sanders if they want to win? That can't be right!
I guess I should stop being surprised by how slow you are to realize these things. But why "can't" it be right?
The question of what organ Susan Sarandon does vote with is yet unanswered.
I think it's called a "heart".
You ever run across anyone yet who had one of those things?
It must have been traumatic.
The enduring myth of Coolidge as do-nothing rides again.
As regards Hoover (the person you meant to say), his rhetoric certainly did nothing.
FDR rallied the nation. He didn't care "in private". He went out, he showed concern, he went beyond in identifying all the groups left behind both before and after the crash, and he spoke to the need to re-order the way things were done. He created a massive movement in American politics, changing it almost permanently for the better, and stopped pretending that keeping the federal government hamstrung was going to be the usual order of business any longer.
Rhythm and Balls said...
"As regards Hoover (the person you meant to say), his rhetoric certainly did nothing."
Hoover. Yes! God's bodkins—what did I say? Coolidge? My word.
Heh. It's an understandable error. ;-)
So... the Dems should pick Sanders if they want to win? That can't be right!
I agree that that can't be right, but that is what the polls show, across the board. Bernie Sanders does a couple of points better than Hillary.
The best thing to go sometimes, is not polls, but what you can extrapolate from past elections. What would happen after a campaign is different than what the polls are showing.
To some people, Bernie Sanders is, at this point, a blank slate.
holdfast said...
2/18/16, 11:24 AM
I can believe that Bernie would be a better candidate than Hillary. That's a *really* low bar. And he has no history. To most of America, he'd be whatever the mainstream media decided to portray him as for the campaign. That alone is worth ten points
It seems to net out at about 3 to 4 points in favor of Bernie at this point in the election year.
For those of us who actually remember and think about the Cold War, Bernie's pro-commie activities should be a deal-breaker. But there are so many millennial voters who have no recollection or knowledge at all about the USSR, plus a solid chunk of older voters who just don't care, that I think he has a real shot. Remember, the MFM carried Obama on their collective backs and they will do the same for Bernie.
Besides the people who may not actuall realize how bad was his support for the Sandinistas, and friendliness to Castro, and even the Soviet Union - there is also the fact that now people are more inetersted in his position vs a vs. ISIS, international terrorism, Saudi Arabia, Vladimir Putin and getting Islamic governments to oppose terrorism more. Not to mention China. But there may be various impracticalities or wrongheadness there too. But you'll have to find it. And where is he on Israel?
Post a Comment