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Bloomberg’s Disastrous Debate Performance Means He’s Finished

Bloomberg’s Disastrous Debate Performance Means He’s Finished

By John R Guardiano on February 20, 2020

Elizabeth Warren destroyed Michael Bloomberg and ended any chance he had to win the nomination. The beneficiary of her hit job: Bernie Sanders.

Everyone acknowledges that last night’s Democratic Presidential debate was a disaster for Michael Bloomberg. He was weak, timid, meek, defensive, and appeared utterly incapable of taking the fight to Donald Trump in November. And if there’s one thing the Democratic base wants, it’s a fighter who can prosecute the case against Trump and win the general election.

Bloomberg did not in any way, shape or form appear to be that fighter. Quite the opposite: it was all too easy to imagine the Michael Bloomberg whom we saw last night getting destroyed by Trump and his minions.

The question is: how significant was last night’s disaster? Does it do irreparable harm to Bloomberg or can he recover? Andrew Egger argues in The Dispatch that Bloomberg can recover. His electoral strategy, he argues,

has never hinged on scoring an effervescent victory on the debate stage.

In fact, there’s a sense in which the whole thesis of the Bloomberg campaign is that, in a divided field that overwhelms voters with options, a big enough infusion of cash can short-circuit the system and render sorting mechanisms like debates irrelevant altogether…

It’s hard to see how one bad debate performance sets it [Bloomberg’s big money strategy] back much. After all, the voters Bloomberg is targeting are the ones least likely to have seen that performance at all.

I completely disagree, and here’s why.

As we’ve explained here at ResCon1, despite his boomlet in recent weeks and sudden rise in the polls, Bloomberg was always exceedingly unlikely to win the Democratic nomination.

There are too many candidates in the race; his opponents, especially Bernie Sanders, have too much underlying political appeal and organizational strength; and the Democratic primary electorate is too fractured for Bloomberg ever to have had any hope of getting a majority of the delegates before the party’s convention in July.

Bloomberg’s only hope all along has been to deny Sanders and Biden a majority of the delegates, build up a big head of political steam and momentum going into the convention, and fight it out there in a 21st-Century version of what the political pros call a “brokered” or contested convention.

But that strategy always depended on Bloomberg performing well and demonstrating not just political appeal to a Democratic base that is increasingly woke and progressive, but also that he could win and defeat Donald Trump. The problem with last night’s disastrous debate performance is that it demonstrated (conclusively, I think) that both of those things are manifest untrue and won’t change.

No Political Appeal. Bloomberg’s political appeal to the far-left Democratic base was always suspect—because of his phenomenal success as a businessman and because of his record as Mayor of New York City, where he supported “stop and frisk” police tactics and school choice, among other heresies.

But what last night proved is that Bloomberg has other big problems with the left, which he never effectively addressed. Acting as the party’s ideological enforcer and referee, Elizabeth Warren led the charge and absolutely eviscerated Bloomberg with laudable prosecutorial skill and precision:

I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who calls women “fat broads” and “horse-faced lesbians.” And, no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.

Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist polls like redlining and stop and frisk.

Look, I’ll support whoever the Democratic nominee is. But understand this: Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another.

This country has worked for the rich for a long time and left everyone else in the dirt. It is time to have a president who will be on the side of working families and be willing to get out there and fight for them. That is why I am in this race, and that is how I will beat Donald Trump.

Those were Warren’s opening remarks, but it got even worse for Bloomberg as the debate progressed.

When he was asked about allegations that his company was a hostile workplace for women, and that he had publicly admitted to making sexually suggestive remarks to former employees, Bloomberg meekly responded that had no tolerance for bad behavior toward women; and that lots of people who have worked for him in high positions are women.

Warren immediately responded with direct rhetorical jabs that had Bloomberg reeling with no response and no fight.

I hope you heard what his defense was. “I’ve been nice to some women.” That just doesn’t cut it.

The mayor has to stand on his record. And what we need to know is exactly what’s lurking out there. He has gotten some number of women, dozens, who knows, to sign nondisclosure agreements both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace.

So, Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those nondisclosure agreements, so we can hear their side of the story?

Bloomberg’s lame and politically disastrous response: “They signed the agreements and that’s what we’re going to live with.”

There are other instances in the debate of Bloomberg floundering and showing his political ineptitude and tin ear; but the bottom line is this:

The Democratic Party in 2020 is not gonna nominate a candidate whom major party leaders such as Elizabeth Warren compellingly charge with being a misogynist and a racist. It’s simply not gonna happen. The party is too woke for that.

If Bloomberg had been able to respond effectively to these charges and had demonstrated real political skill and capability, then he perhaps might have overcome this problem.

The Democrats, after all, want nothing more than to defeat Donald Trump. Thus they might well have been willing to forgive Bloomberg for his transgressions and heresies if he had demonstrated some ability to win. But the fact is Bloomberg did not respond effectively because he is incapable of doing so. He cannot win and he cannot defeat Trump.

The Democratic base knows this now and won’t ever rally to Bloomberg—not now in the primaries and not at a brokered or contested convention.

Sure, Bloomberg may be able to buy 15-30 percent of the primary vote through the political equivalent of carpet bombing—i.e., saturating the airwaves and cyberspace with political advertising—but he’ll never exceed 15-30 percent. That’s a ceiling he can’t possibly overcome.

Nor will Bloomberg ever overcome the disastrous first impression that he created with his abysmal debate performance. A leopard never changes its spots, and Bloomberg can’t become something he’s not. The Democratic base knows who Bloomberg is now and he is not someone whom they want. He’s finished, even as he limps forward into Super Tuesday and beyond.

Bernie’s The One . The big winner, without question: Bernie Sanders. None of the other candidates laid a glove on him. They were too focused on going after Bloomberg and attacking each other.

Warren, in fact, went out of her way to largely defend Sanders when he was attacked by Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg for pushing a healthcare plan that would take away private-sector health insurance from millions of Americans. Buttigieg, she said,

really has a slogan that was thought up by his consultants to paper over a thin version of a plan that would leave millions of people unable to afford their health care. It’s not a plan. It’s a PowerPoint.

And Amy’s plan is even less. It’s like a Post-It note: “Insert Plan Here.”

Bernie has… a good start, but instead of expanding and bringing in more people to help, instead, his campaign relentlessly attacks everyone who asks a question or tries to fill in details about how to actually make this work. And then his own advisors say, “Yeah, [it] probably won’t happen anyway.”

In other words, Buttigieg and Klobuchar are not serious about health insurance reform, but Bernie is. However, Bernie needs to be less defensive and more accommodating of outside input.

The bottom line: the Las Vegas debate is notable and historic because it has irreversibly altered the trajectory of the Democratic presidential primary race.

Before the debate, Bloomberg was rising in the polls. He had created an opportunity for himself to challenge Sanders for the nomination. It was, as I’ve explained before, a slim chance, but it was a chance nonetheless.

Now, though, that chance is gone. Warren effectively closed if off by exposing Bloomberg as ideologically out of synch with the Democratic Party and politically inept and weak. Steel yourself, then, for socialist Bernie Sanders to be christened the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nominee.

Feature photo credit: CNN.

Despite Her Formidable Debating Skills, Elizabeth Warren Cannot Win the Democratic Presidential Nomination

Despite Her Formidable Debating Skills, Elizabeth Warren Cannot Win the Democratic Presidential Nomination

By John R Guardiano on February 21, 2020

Should the commentariat reconsider Elizabeth Warren’s prospects in light of her impressive debate performance Wednesday night, during which she effectively destroyed whatever slim chance Michael Bloomberg had to win the Democratic presidential nomination?

That’s the question many journalists and pundits are now asking. It’s a fair question, of course, but the answer is “no,” and here’s why:

Although she can be an extraordinarily effective and formidable debater (Mona Charen calls her “the Terminator”), Warren has not demonstrated a corresponding ability to win votes, caucuses and primaries.

She finished third in Iowa, with less than a fifth of the vote, and fourth in New Hampshire, with just 9.2 percent of the vote. Warren also is losing to Sanders in her home state of Massachusetts. (“Losing your home state,” quips the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein, “is the political equivalent of the Mendoza Line.”)

And these results almost certainly are the high-water mark for Warren. Indeed, for her campaign, it appears to be all downhill from here—even accounting for any post-debate bounce. The Nevada Caucuses, for instance, are tomorrow (Feb. 22), and a new Emerson College/8 News Now poll shows Warren finishing fourth, with just 12 percent of the vote.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Warren gains five points from the afterglow of her stellar debate performance. That’s still not nearly enough to overtake Bernie Sanders, who has a commanding lead in Nevada.

Moreover, report Shane Goldmacher and Astead W. Herndon in the New York Times, because of early voting, 75,000 Nevadans voted before the debate even took place.

The South Carolina primary (Feb. 29) is eight days away, and a new Winthrop University poll shows Warren in fifth place there, with an abysmal six percent of the vote.

Again, let’s assume, generously, that she gains five points from her debate performance: Warren’s still not anywhere close to overtaking Sanders or Biden in South Carolina. And she faces similar hurdles throughout the South.

In a word, Warren’s problem is Sanders. He stands in her way. They are both the most left-wing or “progressive” candidates running, and they both compete for the same voters. Warren’s problem is that woke progressives prefer Sanders and are far more loyal to him than they are to her.

The New Yorker’s Peter Slevin captured Warren’s predicament in a Feb. 20 report from Raleigh, North Carolina. “Morgan Jackson,” he notes,

a North Carolina political strategist, thinks that Warren is in trouble in the state, where Democrats are as divided as their counterparts across the country, and that Sanders, in particular, stands in her way.

“As long as they split the very progressive vote in North Carolina, there’s no path,” Jackson said, adding that neither candidate has been polling well among African-American voters, who comprise nearly half of the state’s electorate.

Even with her superior ground game, he believes, Warren cannot do well in the state unless she finds momentum somewhere, “and I don’t know where that is,” he said.

Second-Choice Candidate. Exactly. Warren is the left’s second-choice candidate. She did an excellent job discrediting Bloomberg. His net-favorability fell by 20 points post-debate, according to a new Morning Consult poll. Yet, she is still in fourth place, while Sanders has solidified his status as the front-runner.

In short, while Warren can continue to shape and disrupt this race, she cannot win the Democratic presidential nomination.

And this is not simply a matter of conjecture. We’ve already seen enough voting, polling, and real-world results to know that, while the party’s base respects Warren, it does not love her.

The left’s heart lies with Bernie. Centrist Dems, meanwhile, are more inclined to vote for Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or Bloomberg.

Warren raised $5 million off of her debate performance and “reported the best hour of fundraising in [her] campaign’s history,” writes ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett. So she may hang around in this race for a while longer.

However, her ultimate place in the primary contest already has been determined: second, third, fourth, or fifth place, but not first. Not this time. This time, it seems, Bernie’s the one.

Feature photo credit: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images via Forbes.

The 1980 ‘Miracle on Ice’ Presaged a Providential American Comeback Led by Ronald Reagan

The 1980 ‘Miracle on Ice’ Presaged a Providential American Comeback Led by Ronald Reagan

By John R Guardiano on February 22, 2020

Today is the fortieth anniversary of the “Miracle on Ice,” when the underdog U.S. men’s hockey team, which no one every thought had a chance, beat the world’s greatest hockey superpower, the Soviet Union, in the semifinal round of the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Two days later (Feb. 24, 1980), the U.S. men’s hockey team beat Finland to win the Olympic Gold medal.

The “Miracle on Ice” was a welcome and surprise victory that helped lift the spirits of the country at a time when America was down, and, many believed, in a state of irreversible decline.

And, in retrospect, it was clearly providential and a harbinger of the future. The win presaged the oft-stated belief by then-Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan that America’s best days lie ahead.

In fact, with Reagan’s election as president, America came roaring back and experienced one of the greatest economic booms in its history, while defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

Talk of national decline was eclipsed with talk of American greatness, as the country enjoyed a quarter-century of triumph and achievement arguably unlike anything it has ever experienced and likely every will experience again.

All of this may seem obvious with the benefit of historical hindsight; but on Feb. 22, 1980, the notion that America had a future worthy of its past seemed quaint and fanciful.

American Decline. The U.S. economy was mired in a deep recession; the auto industry was on the ropes, with Chrysler and American Motors on the verge of bankruptcy; and OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in the Middle East, had America over a barrel—literally and figuratively.

The Soviet Union, meanwhile, was on the march—in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Nicaragua turned communist in 1979 and El Salvador seemed destined to follow. Communist Cuban guerrillas were on the offensive in Angola, and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.

In 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev boasted, “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!” In February 1980, it looked, sadly, like he might be right.

In the preceding decade, the United States had suffered a series of disasters, including: the Vietnam War, Watergate, the resignation of Richard Nixon as president, oil and energy shocks, gas rationing and long lines at the pump, recessions and high inflation, Three Mile Island…

By November 1979, Islamist revolutionaries in Iran had toppled the government there and taken 52 Americans hostage. A rescue attempt in April 1980 was a complete fiasco. America looked like a pitiful, helpless giant, as even then-President Jimmy Carter seemed to acknowledge.

“The erosion of our confidence in the future,” Carter said in his important but much-derided ‘malaise speech,’ “is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”

The malaise speech was much-derided not because it was wholly wrong in its diagnosis, but rather because Carter appeared to have no clue about how to right the ship of state and reverse America’ precipitous decline.

David versus Goliath. This was the political context in February 1980 when the U.S. men’s hockey team began its miraculous ascent.

The team was comprised of amateurs from the American heartland. Most were from Minnesota and other northern states. Some had played college hockey; but no one would ever put them on a par with their vaunted counterparts from the Soviet Union.

As Tom D’Angelo explains in the Palm Beach Post:

The Soviets had won six of the previous seven gold medals in men’s hockey and were the overwhelming favorites. The team was made up of professionals who had been crushing opponents after losing to the U.S. in the 1960 Games, losing just one game in the previous 20 years.

This band of mismatched American collegians led by feisty coach Herb Brooks stood no chance against the Red Army.

“By the time of the big game on Friday, Feb. 22,” notes the Washington Examiner’s Quin Hillyer,

the American people had adopted their gritty team in a way that I’ve never seen before or since. It is not mere ex post facto gloss to say the contest was seen as being about much more than just hockey, more even than Olympic gold.

For the first time since World War I, Americans saw themselves—not just the team, but the nation—as underdogs. The young hockey squad carried the country’s hopes that underdogs still could win, that freedom could defeat regimentation, and that right could triumph. The battle seemed civilizational.

Win, of course, the Americans did. Most readers know the game story—the saves by goalie Jim Craig, the go-ahead goal by captain Mike Eruzione, and announcer Al Michaels’s immortal question, as the last seconds ran off the clock: “Do you believe in miracles?”

“Yes!” he answered… And finally, yes, we did.

This was very important, because by most lights, it would take a miracle to outstrip the Soviets in the far more consequential, geopolitical, nuclear-haunted battle of ideals and will.

The problem was that only one major presidential candidate in 1980 seemed eager to wage that battle.

His name: Ronald Wilson Reagan. The rest, as they say, is history. Reagan would go on to win the presidency, and then to inspire and lead an American economic renaissance. And, in the end, thanks to his concerted efforts, it was the United States that buried the Soviet Union.

But for most ordinary Americans, the first real glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, all was not lost, and that America could once again be great, came in the winter of our discontent in a small town (Lake Placid) in upstate New York.

There a group of unheralded but determined young Americans came together as a team to give it their all and achieve the impossible. And if they could do it, so could we. And we did.

Feature photo credit: Focus on Sports/Getty via InsideHook.

Obesity Is a Much More Dangerous Public Health Problem Than the Coronavirus

Obesity Is a Much More Dangerous Public Health Problem Than the Coronavirus

By John R Guardiano on March 10, 2020

The coronavirus is dominating the headlines. This is understandable, given that it is a new and potentially fatal virus that we don’t well understand, and for which there is not yet a vaccine.

Still, as Anthony S. Fauci, M.D, acknowledges, the risks of serious ailments from the coronavirus are “overwhelmingly weighted toward people with underlying [medical] conditions and the elderly.” Fauci is Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Relative Risk. So, if you’re not a senior citizen and you don’t have an underlying medical condition, then it is exceedingly unlikely that you will die or suffer a serious problem if you contract the coronavirus.

Yet, a far more dangerous and deadly public health problem, which affects many more Americans, young and old, gets relatively little media and political attention. I refer, of course, to obesity.

“Some 42.4 percent of U.S. adults,” reports the Washington Post’s Linda Searing,

now qualify as obese, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], with no real difference in prevalence between men and women…

Both obesity and severe obesity are most common among middle-aged adults (those ages 40 to 59), according to the CDC.

Data show that since the start of the 21st century, obesity has become increasingly common, rising from about 30 percent to more than 40 percent of adults, while the prevalence of severe obesity has increased from about 5 percent to just over 9 percent in that time…

Obesity also has been linked to an increased risk for numerous diseases and medical issues, including diabetes, heart disease and some cancers, as well as depression, asthma, obstructive sleep apnea, osteoarthritis and back pain.

Health experts say that losing just 5 to 10 percent of body weight can help obese people rein in their health risks.

Adds the New York Times’ Jane E. Brody:

A prestigious team of medical scientists has projected that by 2030, nearly one in two adults will be obese, and nearly one in four will be severely obese…

In as many as 29 states, the prevalence of obesity will exceed 50 percent, with no state having less than 35 percent of residents who are obese, they predicted…

Given the role obesity plays in fostering many chronic, disabling and often fatal diseases, these are dire predictions indeed. Yet… the powers that be in this country are doing very little to head off the potentially disastrous results of expanding obesity, obesity specialists say…

Americans weren’t always this fat; since 1990, the prevalence of obesity in this country has doubled.

People who choose to blame genetics are fooling no one but themselves… Our genetics haven’t changed in the last 30 years. Rather, what has changed is the environment in which our genes now function.

As we’ve observed here at ResCon1, the obesity epidemic is a national disgrace, and it is largely preventable.

Simply put, we Americans eat too much bad food too often, with little or no regard for necessary limits on our daily caloric intake and the need for proper proportions of macro nutrients—i.e., fat, protein, and carbohydrates.

The problem starts early in life, during childhood and adolescence, as some 18.5 percent of the youth population in America is obese, according to the CDC.

Public Policy. The politicians and the media could do more to focus attention on this problem and educate the public. There also are concrete public policy actions that could be taken.

For example, federal nutritional guidelines that recommend we consume an inordinate and unhealthy amounts of carbohydrates should be revised, and the demonization of fat needs to be reconsidered in light of the best and most recent scientific research.

This may be less alluring than obsessing over a new virus that has induced a public panic (or at least a media panic), but it would be far more effective and desirable from a public health perspective.

Feature photo credit: CDC via Stat News (map of obesity rates by state).

Putin’s Nuclear Blackmail Gambit

Putin’s Nuclear Blackmail Gambit

By John R Guardiano on October 2, 2022

The danger is less that Putin will use nukes and more that the West might be intimidated and back down because of Putin’s threat to use nukes.

Vladimir Putin doesn’t want to use a nuclear weapon to win a military victory in Ukraine, because he knows that won’t work. A nuclear strike makes no military sense and will not alter the course of the war.

Instead, Putin wants to use the threat of a nuclear strike to secure a political and territorial victory in Ukraine without having to further employ his inept and incapable military.

Putin hopes to intimidate the West into backing down and to force Ukraine to the bargaining table, where it will have to acquiesce in Russia’s sham annexation of five Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea.

As the New York Times reports:

The revelation of the Ukraine conflict—that Russia’s conventional forces were poorly trained, unimaginative and ill-equipped—has made Mr. Putin all the more dependent on his unconventional weapons…

[However], the threat [to use a nuclear weapons] may be more effective than actually using [such] a weapon because the cost to Russia of breaking a 77-year taboo could be astronomically high.

Indeed, and so, the question for the United States and NATO is:

Will we allow Russian nuclear blackmail to succeed? Will we set a new international precedent that might makes right; and that bad men with nuclear weapons can force good men with a conscience to back down and surrender?

Fortunately for Ukraine and for humanity, it doesn’t look like that will be the case. President Biden and other NATO leaders have been steadfast in their refusal to be cowed and intimidated by Russian nuclear threats and bluster.

President Biden: We “are not going to be intimidated by Putin and his reckless words and threats. He’s not going to scare us… We’re going to continue to provide military equipment, so that Ukraine can defend itself and its territory and its freedom…”

French President Emmanuel Macron: “France expresses its firm opposition [to Russian threats and Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory. We] will continue to stand by Ukraine in order to deal with Russian aggression and to enable Ukraine to recover its full sovereignty across its entire territory.”

German Chancellor Olaf Schloz: “The sham referendums carried out by Putin in the illegally occupied areas of Ukraine are worthless. They violate international law. Germany will never recognise the so-called results. I assured [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky of this in a phone call yesterday.”

British Prime Minister Liz Truss: “We will not hesitate to take further action, including imposing more sanctions to cripple Putin’s war machine. We will ensure he loses this illegal war.”

These assurances are important, critical, and welcome: because if Putin’s nuclear blackmail gambit succeeds in forcing the West to back down, it will give license to further nuclear blackmail by other bad actors and incentivize them to acquire nuclear weapons. The results could be catastrophic.

Now is the time and Ukraine is the place to draw a clear red line. The use of nuclear weapons cannot and will not be tolerated. Any Russian use of nukes will be met with a catastrophic consequences for Russia. Then and only then might we prevent the unthinkable from ever happening while securing a real and lasting peace.

President Biden and other NATO leaders clearly recognize this. So, too, should the Russian dictator, Putin. The West, sir, ain’t bluffing.

Feature photo credit: U.S. President Joe Biden (L) and British Prime Minister Liz Truss (R), courtesy of The Independent.