Elizabeth Warren’s Legacy: Idea that Trump is an ordinary rich guy

Elizabeth Warren is gone, much to the dismay of my Facebook friends, especially degreed women who don’t work. Before Warren dropped out, one of my friends on Facebook said “More of this, please!” over a video of Elizabeth Warren in which she says that replacing Donald Trump with Michael Bloomberg would “Just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another”.

Of course, I couldn’t resist asking “Shouldn’t she be happy if any Democrat replaces Trump? How can she say that it wouldn’t be progress for the virtuous billionaire to replace the hated dictator?”

His response included the following:

You are making the claim that neither Warren nor I appreciate that Trump and his minions are a threat to democracy and Bloomberg is not. I don’t believe you believe this claim. Therefore I believe you are trolling.

“Trolling” seems to mean “point out a logical inconsistency,” so had to continue:

“Just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another” does not seem like a great way to highlight that one of said billionaires is a “threat to democracy”.

Perhaps Elizabeth Warren would personally have voted for Michael Bloomberg if he’d won the nomination, but that’s just Pepsi vs. Coke according to her, right? Not “new Hitler” or “threat to Democracy” or “insane” versus “reasonable”, “rational”, and “righteous”.

After telling Americans that they might not survive four more years of Donald Trump, that the Trump Presidency was a “national emergency,” etc., the Democrats have their smartest politician on record saying that one of their own is scarcely superior.

I’m wondering if this will be the only lasting legacy of the Warren campaign.

Related (loosely):

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How could Elizabeth Warren have run for President if she couldn’t win her own state?

Super Tuesday is mostly over. Here in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren seems to be on track to place third (NPR). That’s a dismal performance considering that she is the only candidate with a connection to Massachusetts and is, in fact, our senior Senator.

If politics is mostly a professional endeavor, how could the professionals have failed to predict her lack of appeal? (perhaps it was the 70-year-old’s comparative youth and lack of life experience that caused voters to reject her?) She spent more than a year campaigning.

Separately, below are the diverse political signs at our polling place, which happens also to be a school where diversity is celebrated (said school soon to be torn down and the students moved into trailers for three years). There is good news for Native Americans who want to wear the mantle of modern victimhood: “We are ALL Immigrants.” We can “Respect the Science” by re-electing Senator Ed Markey, who last took a science course in high school circa 1962 (Wikipedia suggests that he got an unspecified BA and then went on to law school).

In short, “If you Vote for Democrats, all of your wildest dreams will come true.”

My Facebook friends seem to be newly excited about Joe Biden. One of them posted a recent quote:

“We can and we must build a more perfect union. Because the American people have seen the alternative, so let’s get back up. We’re decent, we’re brave, we’re a resilient people. We can believe again. We’re better than this moment and we’re better than this president. So get up and let’s take back this country. We’re the United States of America. There’s nothing we cannot do if we do it together”

This sounds a bit like a Hollywood Democrat back in 2016:

“I don’t want to move to Canada, but I certainly don’t want to see Donald Trump [win] with bigotry and racism. … This is really serious. It’s somebody appealing to the worst in us.”

But if people who vote for Biden are “better than this president,” aren’t those Biden voters also better people than Trump voters? Why would the “better people” want to do stuff together with people who are racist, sexist, and stupid?

Since there’s nothing we cannot do if we do it together, we will be able to make our own mobile phones, flat screen TVs, and tunneling machines instead of buying them from the Chinese, Koreans, Taiwanese, and Germans? We will be able to dig new metro systems and build out nationwide high-speed rail at a reasonable cost? We will be able to deliver health care without bankrupting ourselves? We could construct cruise ships as good as the ones currently made in France, Italy, Finland, and Germany and not be shut out of this multi-$billion market? If true, why wait until the hated dictator is removed from the White House? Why not start doing these things together tomorrow? Is Trump actually stopping us from working together? How?

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Do all of the Democrats support effectively unlimited immigration?

Voters are choosing today among the remaining Democrats running for President. What is the choice on what many would consider to be the biggest issue and one with the most long-term impact: low-skill immigration ? (transfers $500 billion/year right now from the working class to the rich, for example, and chips away at every American’s infrastructure endowment)

Let’s look at Mike Bloomberg’s immigration policy page:

Mike’s plan will protect Dreamers and TPS holders and create an earned pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented.

Mike will rescind President Trump’s disgraceful travel ban, end family separations at the border, establish rigorous safeguards for children, and promote alternatives to detention for individuals and families who pose no threat to public safety.

A “dreamer” is someone who shows up prior to turning 16 (but since none show up with documents, it is necessary only to say “I am 15”?). There will be no family separation at the border if an adult shows up with someone who is, or says he/she/ze/they is under 18.

Isn’t the effect of these policies essentially unlimited immigration? A would-be adult immigrant shows up with a “child” and neither can be detained (one is a blameless child; detaining the adult would be “family separation at the border”). Once in, the child cannot be deported because he/she/ze/they is now a “dreamer”. Once the “child” turns 18, he/she/ze/they is entitled to obtain green cards for two parents (“chain migration”).

There are roughly 2 billion children worldwide, age 0-14. Add their parents and that’s at least half the world population that would be eligible for legal immigration to the U.S. under Bloomberg’s plan(s).

Do any of the other Democrats propose a substantially different immigration policy?

[Separately, how does Bloomberg know that there are 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S.? There is no citizenship question on the 2020 Census (rumor FAQ) and there wasn’t one on a previous census. The eggheads at Yale say that the likely number is closer to 22 million.]

Exterior of my hotel last week in Los Angeles:

Americans are supposed to call up Mike, charge boldly up to the edge of the coronavirus, and let Swedish vodka merchants tell them how to have sex (but we still want to let the Russians tell us how to vote?).

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Chinese perspective on American Presidential candidates

Some photos from the November 2019 trip to Shanghai…

Folks there love our Democrat-turned-Republican President so much that they named a car after him. The Trumpchi:

Pure Democrats aren’t forgotten either. Shanghai has a substantial monument to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren:

Happy Super Tuesday!

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Massachusetts has Voter ID

My Facebook friends love to post about the evils of states requiring ID to vote. This will, in their view, disenfranchise black voters because black Americans are not competent to obtain ID (unclear where this knowledge comes from since, except for selfie time at Black Panther, none of these folks are ever seen in company with African Americans).

In trying to figure out when our polls will be open tomorrow, I stumbled upon “What To Know About Voting In Mass. On Super Tuesday” (WBUR):

You may be required to show your ID when you check in at your polling place, the state says, under these circumstances … The poll worker has “a reasonable suspicion” that leads them to request ID

In other words, a poll worker can make an arbitrary decision, potentially based on skin color, to demand ID.

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Why does Facebook want us to vote?

Landing page for a recent Facebook alert:

Assuming that I am not special, why does Facebook the Company care whether or not we all vote? (as it happens, the ballot in our suburb is mostly taken up with candidates running unopposed; in the general election, it is nearly all unopposed Democrats)

If this is about general virtue, why not encourage Americans to quit smoking, eat less, study and work harder? Those are much more important and useful messages in all but a handful of swing states.

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Joe Biden: et tu, Google?

Top of my Gmail, day after the New Hampshire primary:

How do folks think the Nevada caucuses will shake out today? Are there enough government workers and people on the traditional welfare system in Nevada to appreciate an old-school Democrat like Uncle Joe? Enough Californians who moved there to escape taxes to appreciate the idea of yet higher taxes under President Sanders? Enough Native Americans to give Elizabeth Warren a boost?

Per https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/07/02/why-isnt-pete-buttigieg-the-front-runner-among-democrats/ , my money is on Mayor Pete! (except that I am not energetic enough to drive down to our local casino and place an actual bet)

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Some kind words from Texas about Michael Bloomberg

A Facebook friend in Dallas pointed out that it isn’t reasonable to complain that Michael Bloomberg is trying to buy the election. In his view, so are the other [tax-more-and-spend-more] Democrats, but they’re trying to buy the election with our money. “At least Bloomie is spending his own.”

(this guy can’t be dismissed as a hater/Deplorable because he doesn’t refer to Mr. Bloomberg as “Mini Mike”)

How is the Bloomberg campaign going? The ads that I’ve seen on Facebook seem targeted at coastal elites who want to feel better about themselves via Trump-hatred and the hatred of Trump voters. Trump and his fans are stupid, racist, etc. Usually there will be a quote from Trump that set the New York Times and its readers on fire, but that Trump voters interpreted in a different way. It is tough to imagine these ads persuading anyone who voted for Trump in 2016 to switch allegiance. But maybe that is the point? It is primary season so the only people who need to see the ads and be persuaded are Democrats?

Separately, I heard that the latest debate among the Democrats involved some sharp exchanges. If the real enemy is Trump, shouldn’t the opposition candidates all be at least as polite as tennis competitors at Wimbledon? The message is that any Democrat is far better than Trump, right? If true, why say something harsh about a fellow Democrat? It would be a personal disappointment to lose the primary round, but saving the country from a Hitler-style dictator is surely more important.

Related:

  • “The Radicalism of Warren’s Unapologetic Aggression” (New Republic); Warren is part of the tribe, so to speak, of Democrats saying we’ll all be infinitely better off if Trump is defeated. Why wouldn’t she at least appear to celebrate the possibility of Mayor Pete or Michael Bloomberg winning in November?
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