My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Coronavirus: is $2.5 billion or $8.5 billion enough? Debate Democrats tearing each other apart Two groups who will determine our next President Why Mike Bloomberg won the debate Reviewing the debate candidates --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
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| Hey everybody, come on in. | |
| It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. | |
| And you came to the right place. | |
| Chances are you came prepared. | |
| You might have everything you need. | |
| The rest of you better hurry up and grab what you need. | |
| And what you need is, well, a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. | |
| Fill it with your favorite liquid. | |
| I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes absolutely everything better. | |
| It's called the simultaneous sip, and you're about to experience it. | |
| Go. Ah. | |
| And with that sip, feel yourself connected to people all over the world who are enjoying this periscope simultaneously. | |
| Well, we got some fun news now. | |
| It's the good kind. | |
| Well, except for the coronavirus, that's not very good. | |
| But there's funny news. | |
| And when the news is funny, it makes me happy. | |
| So let's talk about some of the funny news. | |
| Um... Well, I guess this first part's not too funny, but I started prepping for the coronavirus. | |
| Now, I don't want to panic anybody, but there are a number of people, especially on Twitter, Mike Cernovich being one of the leaders among them, saying maybe you should just be ready because our supply lines and a lot of our economic costs Connecting tissue is sort of falling apart quickly. | |
| Now, I don't think it's going to be a long-term problem. | |
| I think that we'll get through it, we'll be fine. | |
| Most of us will. | |
| Some people will no doubt die, but probably not more than will die on bicycles this weekend, etc. | |
| So, I think the United States is going to do a capable job of keeping the damage to To the lowest level it can be kept to. | |
| So I have some confidence. | |
| But there may be a period where our government says, Hey people, can you just stay home for two weeks? | |
| So I got enough stuff in that none of us will starve to death if it has to happen. | |
| I'll probably put an NRA sticker on the door, just in case. | |
| And just so you know how irrational all of this is, A lot of people, including me, bought a lot of bottled water. | |
| Why do I need bottled water for a virus outbreak? | |
| I mean, think about it. | |
| It's not like the virus is coming through my faucet, and it's not like the water company is going to stop sending me water because they've got a fever. | |
| I have no idea why I'm prepping and stockpiling water But I saw other people doing it, and I thought, well, I don't want to be the idiot who has no water. | |
| So it makes no sense at all, but I did it anyway. | |
| So you might want to think the same way. | |
| Apparently, the Rasmussen poll is showing that Trump has reached a new all-time high in approval. | |
| Now, I know, I know, it's the Rasmussen poll, and it's friendlier to Trump than others. | |
| But If this one is up, the others are probably up from whatever base they were as well. | |
| So I think he's like five points higher than Obama was at the same point. | |
| And so ask yourself, what is it that's making the president's numbers go up? | |
| I think it's probably a bunch of stuff. | |
| But very near the top of the list of what is making Trump look good is the more we see the Democrats. | |
| And I know that sounds like a hugely partisan thing to say, but I think Democrats would agree, right? | |
| Just objectively speaking, I would say that even Democrats are looking at their own best candidates and saying to themselves, seriously? | |
| There are a lot of Democrats. | |
| There are millions of us. | |
| And that was our best group right there. | |
| That's the best they can do. | |
| Now, because they're tearing each other apart, the president doesn't even need to Do much but, you know, lob a grenade into the mess every now and then just for fun. | |
| So the Democrats are doing a good job of tearing each other apart, which is making them all look kind of bad at the moment compared to whatever you thought they looked like a month ago. | |
| It's just part of the process. | |
| So the president being somewhat above the fray at the moment, they're sort of turning their fire on each other. | |
| It makes the contrast a little bit better. | |
| So he just looks good because they're making each other look bad. | |
| But there's some other things happening that are helping the president, and really a lot of stuff going his way. | |
| Now, his trip to India, did you see some of the footage of the outdoor scenes in India where the president was? | |
| I looked at it and I said to myself, is this a really foggy day? | |
| Or is this major city in India so polluted that you can't see 100 feet? | |
| And I wasn't sure. | |
| The first picture, because I thought, well, it might have been fog. | |
| I don't know. But then I saw another article with another picture that looked similar, and it talked about how bad the pollution was. | |
| And I thought to myself, holy hell! | |
| Seriously? You have that many people living in that conditions that literally can't breathe the air? | |
| And when you see our president go over there, you say to yourself, well, there's something that the United States is doing very right compared to that. | |
| Because remember, they're a highly educated, advanced, democratic society. | |
| They have all of the assets that we have, and more in some cases, certainly people. | |
| But they're not doing it right. | |
| I mean, they've created an environment that's killing them just by existing. | |
| And in a subtle way, you say to yourself, my God, look outside. | |
| I'm looking out my window right now. | |
| It doesn't look like that. | |
| So whatever the United States is doing is way better than that. | |
| And the president just irrationally gets some credit for that because you're associating him with With a better result. | |
| So I think the whole India trip has been really positive for the president. | |
| Of course, he got a hero's welcome there. | |
| And then everybody looks at it and they say, wait a minute. | |
| The Democrats have been telling us that this president is disrespected overseas. | |
| But 100% of what we're seeing on this India trip is exactly the opposite. | |
| So, clearly, it has to do with some people, some situations, they don't like him, but that would be the same everywhere. | |
| We've never had a president who was equally liked everywhere in the world. | |
| So I think the foreign trips always work in the president's favor, because he gets a hero's welcome, and that just doesn't match what people are saying about him and the way he would be accepted overseas. | |
| All right, so there's that going on. | |
| I understand... | |
| This was kind of weird. | |
| I saw Jake Tapper tweeted a Fox report story, which by itself was weird. | |
| So how often do the CNN employees retweet content from Fox? | |
| I feel like there's something going on. | |
| Like some kind of rebellion among the staff at CNN. Like I... I don't have evidence of it, but sometimes you can smell things before you can see them. | |
| And I feel like the Democrats are feeling, as they watch the Democratic candidates falling apart in front of them, I think they're feeling it's getting harder and harder to just take a side against Trump. | |
| So I think this is just a speculation, and this is really as much a gut feeling as anything else. | |
| I think you might see some kind of evolution happening as CNN, where you're going to see a little more balance in the reporting, a little less anti-Trump, a little bit more, let's talk about what works and what doesn't work, I think. | |
| Just a guess. | |
| But look for that, anyway. Anyway, what Jake tweeted was that Schumer, apparently Chuck Schumer, is trying to get way more money to battle the coronavirus. | |
| I guess the Trump administration asked for $2.5 billion. | |
| Which sounds like a lot. | |
| And then Schumer came in and asked for 8.5 billion, which is a lot more. | |
| Now, how much do we need? | |
| What's the right number? | |
| Citizen? Voter? | |
| What's the right number? | |
| Is 2.5 the right number? | |
| Is it all we need? Or is 8.5 the right number? | |
| Well, here's the clever part, and credit to Schumer. | |
| You don't know. | |
| I have no idea. | |
| Could we spend 8.5 billion quickly enough? | |
| Because whatever this coronavirus does to us, it's all going to happen in a year, right? | |
| I mean, whatever happens is going to take about a year. | |
| Could we spend 8.5 billion in a year? | |
| I don't know. It could be that that's a complete waste of money. | |
| But, politically, how does it make you feel? | |
| Well, I feel a lot more comfortable if the government says, let's try 8.5. | |
| I feel way more comfortable if the government says some form of this. | |
| And by the way, I think if I'm being objective, I think Trump is blowing it. | |
| On his handling of the coronavirus. | |
| I think he's blowing it. | |
| Now, I'm not the one who's going to criticize the details. | |
| Meaning, I can't tell. | |
| Does it matter that the pandemic guy got fired two years ago and budget cuts? | |
| I don't know. Does it matter? | |
| Because it probably doesn't. | |
| But might. Who knows? | |
| I'm not the guy who can argue the details. | |
| Because the thing that you never know is if there had been a different president in the same circumstances... | |
| Would that different president have done something differently that would have gotten a better result? | |
| We'll never know, because there's no test. | |
| All we know is what one president did. | |
| So, I can't intellectually, honestly criticize or compliment anything the Trump administration does on this, unless it's so amazing or so egregious that it's just obvious it's a mistake. | |
| But anything in that middle zone of, well, we got this much money, we did these things, we got this result, we wish it had been better, Anything in that vast middle zone, if you're being honest, you don't know. | |
| You don't know if another president would have done it better or differently. | |
| But one thing we can tell is how they make us feel. | |
| And I feel a lot better at 8.5. | |
| Because it just feels like the government is making more of an effort. | |
| I don't know if we could spend 8.5. | |
| I really don't. | |
| But I'd feel better if the government took the big number instead of the small number. | |
| So I think this is a case where Schumer wins politically. | |
| Because he's doing something that makes the country feel better. | |
| And Trump is not. | |
| Trump has sort of played it off as, you know, we got this, the United States is in good shape. | |
| That's half of what I want to hear. | |
| And this is why I say Trump is kind of blowing it on this. | |
| Because he's only halfway right. | |
| So the first half I want to hear is that we're very capable. | |
| We've got great people. | |
| We're funding them. We're taking this very seriously. | |
| And we're in good shape. I want to hear that. | |
| Here's the other part I want to hear. | |
| We're going to over-prepare. | |
| We don't know exactly what the right thing to do is. | |
| We don't know exactly the right budget. | |
| But we're going to err on the side of being over-prepared. | |
| I'm telling you now, people, we don't think it's going to be the big problem that people are saying it's going to be. | |
| We think we can avoid that. | |
| But here's our approach. | |
| Whatever we think is the right amount of preparation, we're going to do more than that. | |
| We're going to exceed that. | |
| That's the best we can do. | |
| Now, if my president tells me that, hey, I think we'll be fine, and the reason I think we'll be fine is we're going to really over-prepare, then I'm feeling good. | |
| But if my president says, I think we're going to be fine, here's our 2.5 million we asked for, and then you see Schumer asked for 8.5, do you still think we're over-preparing? | |
| Well, 8.5 might be over-preparing, and I prefer it. | |
| So that's my take on that. | |
| I think Schumer wins this round politically, even if the 8.5 is unnecessary. | |
| Here's a positive thought. | |
| Maybe some of you won't think this is a positive thought, but I'm going to frame it that way. | |
| However many years it was since the Emancipation Proclamation, somebody tell me how many years that's been in the comments. | |
| So many years have gone by, and then of course Black people have to fight and fight and fight, and civil rights are still fighting, and things are still not exactly as fair and equal as people would like it, but a lot closer. | |
| But let me give you this thought that's just sort of mind-blowing. | |
| So, X years ago was slavery in this country. | |
| In 2020, black voters will pick our president. | |
| Again. Because I think you'd agree that the, you know, the, whatever, 90% plus percentage of African American citizens who voted for Obama twice were undoubtedly the reason he was elected twice. | |
| I mean, all the other variables had to be in place and white people had to vote for him too. | |
| But the most determined variable The one that I think is by far the most important was the black vote. | |
| Now, fast forward to 2020. | |
| Who gets to decide who's our next president? | |
| In my opinion, it's black citizens. | |
| So, 156 years ago, black people in this country were literally slaves. | |
| And in 156 years, it's 2020, they will decide again for the third time in a row. | |
| Well, I guess you could say it would be the fourth time in a row. | |
| The black vote kind of is going to decide who's the president. | |
| Right? I'm not wrong about that. | |
| Because it wouldn't take much... | |
| For them to overwhelmingly re-elect President Trump. | |
| It wouldn't take much. Just a little bit of movement toward more Republican voting. | |
| And it wouldn't take much to keep him from being elected. | |
| Simply vote at the same ratio they voted for Obama and that's it. | |
| That's the end of it. | |
| Now you can also do the same thing with the female vote. | |
| How many years ago was it that women didn't have the vote? | |
| But women are now the majority of the country in a system in which the majority vote means something. | |
| So women have the power, should they decide to vote as a coherent bloc, there are more of them. | |
| Women actually have the power if they decide to use it in a combined way. | |
| And I also believe that women are far more educated at the moment. | |
| Is that not true? That there are more women getting into college, more women becoming lawyers and doctors, etc., high-paying careers. | |
| So I think there are more educated women, and education is highly correlated with percentage of voting, right? | |
| The more highly educated, the more likely you're going to show up at the polls. | |
| I'd say that women and black Americans have effectively the majority control of the electoral process. | |
| All right. So that's just an interesting thing to think about. | |
| I've been saying this for a while. | |
| Candace Owens says it better. | |
| But I think that Republicans are natural allies with the African American community. | |
| They're the most naturally compatible group. | |
| Now, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. | |
| Some percentage of Republicans are irredeemable racists. | |
| I'm sure some percentage of Democrats are also irredeemable racists. | |
| We're not talking about them. | |
| We're not talking about them. | |
| But just your general Republican is a natural ally to the black community. | |
| You can see this in the results that the president's got, everything from Prison reform to special economic zones to increased funding for historically black colleges and low unemployment rate that he crows about all the time. | |
| But here's the thing. | |
| Don't you think that open borders could be considered the opposite of reparations? | |
| Because if you are a black citizen in this country, How do you feel about opening the border and letting people in, who of course never suffered from slavery in this country, never benefited from it, they're just sort of another group, but they are having a big impact on your tax base, your economic situation. | |
| How can you have open borders And also be in favor of reparations, because open borders feels like the opposite. | |
| Somebody says a stretch. | |
| Is it a stretch? If Republicans are trying to keep the border tight, and explicitly for the benefit of Americans, and explicitly for the benefit of Americans at the lower end of the economic situation, I don't know. | |
| It just looks like Republicans are the natural allies. | |
| And the other thing that Republicans have that the black community shares is they're pretty religious. | |
| So Republicans are pretty religious. | |
| The black community is pretty religious. | |
| And Republicans have a path to success. | |
| Follow these laws. | |
| Get a job. | |
| Obey the Constitution. | |
| Boom. You're good with us. | |
| Us being Republicans. | |
| I'm not a Republican, but playing the part of a Republican for this point. | |
| Alright, so I think that's the biggest story, is the black vote, and it will continue to be through 2020. | |
| Let's talk about the debate, how everybody did. | |
| In my opinion, Mike Bloomberg won the debate, and he won it hard. | |
| Now, I tried to ignore all the other punditry before I formed my own opinion. | |
| Because it's easy to be influenced if you're three people in a row who say, you know, X person won. | |
| You start thinking, oh, X person won. | |
| Three people said it. So I intentionally avoided other people's commentary. | |
| Now, other people are not saying, Bloomberg won. | |
| They are saying he did better. | |
| So here's my argument. | |
| for why Bloomberg won. | |
| Part of it is that the others lost. | |
| Bloomberg did a little bit better and everybody else didn't. | |
| So direction matters. | |
| As soon as the public or the pundits sniff any kind of directional change, that makes more difference than where you're at because people are looking at the direction. | |
| So let me go through the other candidates' performance and then I'll talk about why Bloomberg won. | |
| First of all, You can't underestimate how diabolical President Trump's nicknames really are. | |
| When he named Joe Biden Sleepy Joe, as soon as he named him Sleepy Joe, I'm sure I said this in public more than once, I said it's going to cause Biden to have to overcompensate and to look less sleepy. | |
| And that takes you out of your comfort zone, because most people are trying to operate within their personality, to operate the way they always have, and they're comfortable, you know, this is who I am, this is what I do. | |
| As soon as the president says, that little comfort zone you were in, Joe Biden, makes you look sleepy, what does that cause Joe Biden to need to do? | |
| He needs to act not sleepy. | |
| Now, how is he doing it? | |
| Apparently he is substituting good arguments with angry, furrowed brows. | |
| Have you noticed that the less that Joe Biden says, the more angrily he says it? | |
| So, have you noticed that? | |
| When Joe Biden doesn't have a good point, he just says it more angrily. | |
| So, I wonder, like, you know, Joe Biden ordering coffee at Starbucks. | |
| You could see him in there, oh, Mr. | |
| Biden, what can I get for you today? | |
| And Joe Biden would be like, I want a grande, grande latte, leave room for milk, for milk! | |
| And then he would order his coffee, and you'd say, Joe Biden, I don't know why you're so angry, and why are your eyebrows doing that? | |
| Like, do you need a shot of Botox there? | |
| That looks really painful. Do you have a headache afterwards for that eyebrow thing you're doing? | |
| I'm so angry. | |
| Now, to me it seems obvious that he's lost a step, several steps, and that he's compensating for being sleepy by being extra angry. | |
| So he's not acting sleepy, right? | |
| If he did act sleepy, he'd be playing into Trump's trap. | |
| So he left his comfort zone to act really crazy and angry, and people know there's something wrong. | |
| I mean, when you watched Biden last night, did it look like he was a forceful, in-command, alpha leader, which I think is what he was going for, or did he look a little... | |
| Deranged in a way that older people sometimes can be. | |
| Be honest. He just didn't look right. | |
| I mean, if you're being honest. | |
| Now, what did the president tweet about that? | |
| The funniest president in the world? | |
| I wrote it down. Because you have to get the exact wording. | |
| So, one of the secrets of humor is simplification. | |
| And this is one of the secrets that Trump gets right. | |
| Now, of course, people who are not so much in the know, long ago, people stopped doing this, but he would be teased for keeping things so simple. | |
| But that's also the secret to his humor. | |
| Simplicity and humor are almost the same thing. | |
| There's just a little bit of difference. | |
| And once you understand that, then it allows you the formula to be funny. | |
| So look at his simplicity in this. | |
| And also he likes to make things visual. | |
| So see how visual this is and how simple it is. | |
| And that's why it's so funny. | |
| So he tweets this. He goes, Crazy, chaotic, democratic debate last night. | |
| Fake news said Biden did well. | |
| Even though he said half of our population was shot to death. | |
| Which he actually said. | |
| So Biden incorrectly said that 150 million people had been killed by handguns. | |
| That's about half of the population of the United States. | |
| So the president says, fake news said Biden did well, even though he said half of our population was shot to death. | |
| Come on, that's funny. | |
| And then the president continues in his tweet, would be over for most. | |
| Mini Mike was weak and unsteady, but helped greatly by his many commercials, which are not supposed to be allowed. | |
| Now that's true, that the commercials that ran during the presidential debate were Mike Bloomberg commercials. | |
| You know, I was watching on DVR and I would get to the commercial and I started to skip it. | |
| And I thought, am I really seeing this? | |
| How is that fair? | |
| How in the world does Mike Bloomberg get to run Mike Bloomberg commercials during the debate? | |
| How in the world is that legal? | |
| And if it's legal, why is he the only one doing it? | |
| Does nobody else have any money? | |
| Because if I were going to run a debate, if I were going to run an ad on TV, Can you think of a better time to do it? | |
| What would be the best time to run an ad? | |
| So when I say that Mike Bloomberg won the debate, if you were watching the debate and you saw that only one candidate ran a commercial in the debate and it looks like he ran all of them, what would you say to yourself? | |
| I would say there seems to be only one smart, well-funded person on that stage. | |
| Because they all should have done that if that's something you can do, and apparently it is. | |
| So why was he the only one? | |
| It made the others look like idiots, honestly, or underfunded, which would look like a loser as well. | |
| So that's just one of the reasons that Bloomberg won, is that he was the only one doing the obvious, smarter thing, run an ad during the debate. | |
| Let's talk more about Biden. | |
| So, Ronnie Jackson, the ex-doctor to the President, ex-doctor to President Trump, said that Biden might need that cognitive test that he gave the President, and the President scored well. | |
| And I like that Ronnie Jackson is going full political. | |
| I don't know if he's ever done that before, except for supporting the President he worked for. | |
| But that's pretty damning. | |
| When a guy who was the doctor for a president says, I think this candidate needs to take that cognitive test. | |
| It's not just you and I. We're not the only ones seeing something. | |
| There's something wrong there. | |
| So I think Biden is done. | |
| It's a matter of time. | |
| So that's one reason that Bloomberg won. | |
| So Bloomberg wins when the people who are competing against him are not doing better, especially if they're doing worse. | |
| Let's talk about the others. | |
| I thought Elizabeth Warren was boring, lawyerly, unpleasant, and a liar. | |
| That's how she came across to me. | |
| Did anybody else see it differently? | |
| Now, You're probably thinking, oh, Scott, you like President Trump, so you're just saying that Democrats are liars. | |
| But wait for it. | |
| What did Bloomberg lie about yesterday? | |
| What did Bloomberg lie about during the debate? | |
| Or even, if you like, what did Bloomberg lie about recently? | |
| Doesn't even have to be last night. | |
| You know what the answer is? | |
| Nothing. Nothing, right? | |
| Can you think of anything? | |
| I can't think of anything that Bloomberg lied about. | |
| Can you? And he's competing against somebody who stood right next to him and lied. | |
| And he called her out for being inaccurate and stuff. | |
| But I think she didn't have the charisma. | |
| She didn't come across as likable. | |
| And I'm very careful about using that word, because I know there's a gender element to that. | |
| You don't want to be the one who says that a woman was unlikable in a group of men competing for the top office. | |
| And I'm going to soften that this way. | |
| Bernie's pretty unlikable to me. | |
| Right? So I'm not saying this just about Elizabeth Warren. | |
| I find Bernie... | |
| There's stuff I like about him... | |
| Definitely some character elements I like about Bernie, but I don't like listening to him. | |
| He comes across as an angry old man, get off my lawn. | |
| So I would equate them as fairly similarly unlikable, so that I can take the gender part off of that. | |
| Who else? I think that Pete Buttigieg had a really bad night. | |
| Because he kept trying to take an alpha kind of control over the debate because it was kind of a free-for-all. | |
| And you saw that Biden didn't do a good job except complaining because he wasn't getting much time, which was not really very leaderly. | |
| It was more like an old man complaining because somebody stole his mail. | |
| But Buttigieg kept trying to talk over his competitors and failing. | |
| So he would sort of under-talk them. | |
| Somebody else would sort of be commanding your attention, but you'd hear a little Buttigieg voice. | |
| Here's the reason that Buttigieg is done. | |
| The moment you realize that Pete Buttigieg is just the poor man's Mike Bloomberg... | |
| There's no reason for them. | |
| Right? If you wanted a mayor to be your president, somebody who had experience as a mayor, do you want the mayor of a middle-sized town, city? | |
| Or would you want a mayor who ran New York City that's bigger than most or a lot of countries? | |
| No competition, right? | |
| If you wanted somebody who only had experience as a mayor, you're not going to pick the guy from the little city. | |
| You're going to You're going to pick Bloomberg. | |
| Which of them will be better funded? | |
| Well, obviously Bloomberg. | |
| Which of them has more experience? | |
| Obviously Bloomberg. | |
| Which of them has been successful with working across the aisle? | |
| Obviously Bloomberg. | |
| So the problem that P has is that his natural comparison just changed. | |
| Before Bloomberg was actually on the stage, Pete was sort of his own little thing, right? | |
| You didn't think anybody was like him. | |
| He was just all by himself. | |
| It's like he had his own little channel there for a while. | |
| But the moment you add Bloomberg, you've got two mayors, and one of them is a lot more capable and successful and has a record and ran a bigger thing. | |
| It's not even close. So I think Pete disappeared. | |
| He looked like sort of a beta personality on that stage. | |
| I'm going to use beta compared to Elizabeth Warren. | |
| So it's not a gender thing as well. | |
| He looked less strong than Elizabeth Warren did, by comparison. | |
| So I think he's going to fade. | |
| Then let's talk about Bernie. | |
| Bernie has two fatal wounds, two mortal wounds. | |
| So Bernie basically is a dead man walking. | |
| He might make it to the nomination. | |
| He might limp to the nomination. | |
| But he has two fatal flaws. | |
| One is that I think the Democrats did a really good job of making the case, and several of them did, that Bernie candidacy It could be a fatal mistake that would allow another four years of Trump appointing judges. | |
| And it would turn over the House, and it could be a catastrophe. | |
| That is a really good point coming from Democrats. | |
| That same point, if it came from a Republican, wouldn't have the same kind of firepower. | |
| You'd just say, ah, that's just what Republicans say. | |
| But when you see a group of Democrats saying the same thing about one of their own, one of our own, you realize that your plan is going to ruin everything. | |
| I mean, it's the riskiest thing we could ever do. | |
| That's a fatal flaw. | |
| There's nothing Bernie can do to fix that. | |
| But he might have enough already momentum to limp into the nomination. | |
| The other thing that's a fatal flaw is when he was challenged about his programs and how he would pay for them, Each time he's challenged by, let's say, by Democrats, again, it's far more impactful when he's challenged by his own team. | |
| If a Republican challenged him, you'd just say, ah, your numbers are stupid too. | |
| It's just political. | |
| But when his own team challenges him on his numbers not adding up, that's really powerful. | |
| And I keep waiting for Bernie to improve how he's explaining himself, and he's not. | |
| He doesn't seem to have the capability to explain economic stuff in a persuasive, believable way. | |
| So he starts waving his arms and getting angry and throwing out numbers. | |
| And when he does that, waving his arms and throwing out numbers that don't really seem to answer the question of how can we afford all this? | |
| He's just throwing data at you. | |
| He feels like more of a con man. | |
| So I'm slowly feeling his brand being shifted by his opponents from this ethical guy who's got a movement to something more like a con man who knows his numbers don't add up. | |
| Because he now acts like someone who knows it's not real. | |
| Because he does such a bad job of defending it, the math of it, that it doesn't look like he even believes it. | |
| So I think those are his two fatal flaws. | |
| Who else was there? | |
| Klobuchar. You know, I saw some people saying she did a good job. | |
| I would also say that if you were going to grade her on hitting all her notes, saying the right things, having sensible sounding policies, sounding serious, sounding like she had a good track record, If you were doing the checklist of a debate, it'd look really good. | |
| Check, check, check, check, check. | |
| Klobuchar. But here's the thing. | |
| I thought she disappeared on the stage. | |
| That was just my impression. | |
| In other words, when you put her up there with those other people, there's something about her persona that just sort of shrinks. | |
| It could be height. | |
| It could be a gender thing. | |
| But I don't think so, because Elizabeth Warren did not shrink. | |
| So clearly there's... | |
| And I think if you would put Hillary Clinton on the stage, I don't think she would have shrunk. | |
| But there was something about the debate that I couldn't get too interested in what she was saying, even though it all made sense. | |
| Yeah. There's something, a lack of charisma here, that... | |
| Obviously, it hasn't hurt her as a senator. | |
| She's been very successful. | |
| But I'm not sure the public can be happy with, let's say, someone who is just good at their job. | |
| Klobuchar comes across as a comfortable pair of shoes. | |
| Meaning, I don't have anything to complain about from Klobuchar. | |
| If you were to say to me, Name her biggest negative, I'd say, um, well, that's weird. | |
| I can't think of one. She doesn't really have one. | |
| She's actually a really, really strong candidate. | |
| But I don't know that her charisma is selling to her own side. | |
| There's something a little bland about her. | |
| I don't know what it is. So I don't think she's a threat to make a move in the pack. | |
| The other notable person was Steyer. | |
| I can't get too serious about Steyer because I don't think his own side is serious about him. | |
| If Steyer, you know, did unusually well on Super Tuesday or something, I guess I would reassess. | |
| But I don't think he did anything to move up to the top three. | |
| Alright, so, given that the other people looked worse, they either looked fatal or they disappeared, here's what I felt about Bloomberg. | |
| You saw him try to make some jokes that completely didn't work, right? | |
| Did you see that? So Bloomberg tried to be funny. | |
| He tried to be self-deprecating. | |
| He made a joke about a naked cowboy in New York that nobody understood unless they're from New York. | |
| In other words, it's a New York reference. | |
| Totally out of place. He joked that he did so well in the last debate, so he was being self-deprecating. | |
| But it didn't really come across because he didn't deliver it well. | |
| Here was my net impression. | |
| I kind of liked him more. | |
| I don't know if any of you had that impression, but he looked like a nerd who meant well and is very effective. | |
| He's just not good at that stuff. | |
| And I don't have a problem with that. | |
| I don't have any problem with somebody who knows they're a nerd. | |
| They know they're not good at that stuff. | |
| Yeah, he took a shot at it. | |
| Was he embarrassed? Apparently not. | |
| I like a guy who can go out there and fail in public and just say, yeah, laugh it off, try it again. | |
| So I have to say that Bloomberg looked a little more human. | |
| One of the main things I was looking for is to see if his age was as much of a negative as you'd expect. | |
| He didn't look his age. | |
| If you were to compare Bloomberg's mental agility to Joe Biden's, it's not even close, right? | |
| Bloomberg didn't look like there's anything missing. | |
| Now, I still think he's too old. | |
| I don't think we should be electing leaders above a certain age, and he's at it. | |
| But he doesn't show it, so that works to his advantage. | |
| And the other thing that was very strong is he listed off some accomplishments that I wasn't aware of that sounded pretty solid. | |
| He talked about how the school system in New York improved tremendously. | |
| He talked about how life expectancy changed. | |
| In New York, improved while he was mayor. | |
| That's pretty good. He talked about, and here's the best part, he made a little bit of news by misspeaking during the debate. | |
| And he talked about how he helped to fund the campaigns of half of the people who were part of the 40 new people who came into Congress, and flipped the house so that Nancy Pelosi could be in charge, and as he put it, put a control on the president. | |
| So Bloomberg was taking credit For flipping the house and already putting the control on Trump. | |
| But he misspoke and he started to say that he bought it. | |
| Now, here's the thing. | |
| Of course, the gotcha part of the press said, you said bought it? | |
| Are you trying to buy our democracy? | |
| But here's the thing. | |
| He told you. | |
| He's not hiding it. | |
| He bragged about it. | |
| He said, I just bought you the House, and I can buy you the Senate. | |
| Basically, he didn't say that, but the idea is he can buy you what you want. | |
| Do you know how powerful that is? | |
| Bloomberg just said, not only can I buy you what you want with me as president, I proved it. | |
| I bought you what you want in the House. | |
| It worked. And now I'm buying you what you want for the presidency, which is a victory over Trump. | |
| I thought that was the strongest part of his debate. | |
| Because it was something I didn't know that completely changed how I saw it. | |
| Because there's something very na-evil about the transparency he's bringing to the process. | |
| He's telling you exactly what he's doing, and then he does it in front of you. | |
| He does it legally, and he's not making any excuses for it. | |
| He's saying, I bought the house, I'm going to try to buy the election for you. | |
| Now here's the thing. Remember, I said he didn't lie about anything that I can think of. | |
| So you automatically have a little more credibility you give him because he's not lying about stuff. | |
| But he's got some negatives. | |
| Let's talk about them. And I'm going to talk about how he hasn't quite done a good job Talking about his NDAs and talking about his stop-and-frisk. | |
| I'm going to tell you how he could do it better. | |
| I'm going to give some suggestions. | |
| Let's talk about stop-and-frisk first. | |
| Let's say you're the mayor. | |
| Let's say you're Bloomberg and you inherited this program. | |
| But you ran it way too long. | |
| He did shut it down by 95%, but he admits he ran it too long. | |
| So he hasn't done a good job of explaining himself yet. | |
| But he could. | |
| And so let me give you an example of how I would do it. | |
| The biggest thing that people care about is your intentions. | |
| And he doesn't speak to that directly, and he should. | |
| Because remember, the intention of stop and frisk Was a good one. | |
| And I don't think anybody even disagrees with that. | |
| So here's how I would say it. | |
| And it'd be words to this effect. | |
| So let's say I'm Mike Bloomberg and somebody says, hey, you ran that stop and frisk thing and that was very racist. | |
| What do you say to yourself? And I would say this. | |
| The intention of stop and frisk was to take sides with the women and the children and the elderly in high crime neighborhoods. | |
| If you think about it, Stop and Frisk was far more sexist and ageist than it was racist. | |
| And if you don't see what I just did there, I'll come back and explain it. | |
| And I would say this. | |
| I would say that most crime victims are minorities. | |
| And it was a program that started before I was mayor. | |
| It started with good intentions. | |
| It started to help the minority community where crime was rampant. | |
| And I would say, if you think it was racist, I think you're being too kind to it. | |
| It was way more than racist. | |
| It was sexist, because we weren't stopping women. | |
| And it was ageist. | |
| We weren't stopping elderly. | |
| We weren't stopping toddlers. | |
| It was sexist. | |
| It was ageist. | |
| But we, the police, and the mayor, we don't have a choice of where the crime is. | |
| It's not up to us who commits crimes, and it's not up to us where they commit them. | |
| It's our job as the police force, as the mayor, to put law enforcement where there's the most crime. | |
| That's what we did. And we absolutely targeted young men in those areas where there were high crime. | |
| Now, was that right? | |
| Well, it was an experiment, and I would say it was an experiment that did not work. | |
| The blind spot we had is how it would feel to the community. | |
| It feels racist. | |
| And that was a far bigger cost than anybody hoped. | |
| There was nobody who was behind stop-and-frisk who had the intention to make things worse for the community. | |
| But there was a blind spot that it came across as racist. | |
| And in retrospect, I think we would all agree it had more impact on one group than another. | |
| That's racist by definition. | |
| But the intention was positive. | |
| It was absolutely sexist, because we were targeting men. | |
| It was absolutely ageist, because we were targeting young men. | |
| And we were targeting young men who were not dressed for church, if you know what I mean. | |
| Now, we wouldn't do it again. | |
| We learned from it. | |
| Now, here's the next part of my persuasion. | |
| As mayor, I inherited this program, and I accept responsibility for not shutting it down sooner. | |
| And I would like to promise all of my critics that should any of my critics ever do anything right in the future, I'll be the first one to tell them they should have done it sooner. | |
| Because you can't do something that's right soon enough. | |
| And so to my critics who say I didn't shut it down soon enough, you're right. | |
| You can never be soon enough for something that's the right thing to do. | |
| I've apologized for it. | |
| I just want you to know the intentions were right. | |
| I hope we all learned something from it. | |
| It's not something we'd do again. | |
| And the impact was unforgivable. | |
| Is that better? How would you feel about that? | |
| Because the key here is that the intentions were good and that you were intending to discriminate, but it was against men who were young. | |
| Do you know how many people are willing to discriminate against young men? | |
| A lot. It doesn't matter what your ethnicity is. | |
| Young men do commit a lot of crimes. | |
| It's true. I was a young man. | |
| I know. All right, so then the other thing he gets... | |
| He hasn't done a good job of defending his non-disclosure agreements, and apparently he said some offensive things that made people uncomfortable. | |
| We don't know the details. | |
| And he even says he doesn't remember the details. | |
| And I actually think that might be true. | |
| I think he actually doesn't remember what he might have said that would have caused the problem long ago. | |
| Here's how I would have responded to that. | |
| Mayor Bloomberg, you have some NDAs, and they were offensive. | |
| Now, the first thing he did is that he agreed to release the people from their NDAs, which was a total baller move. | |
| I gotta say, that was a strong play. | |
| He just released them and just said, if they want to talk to you, it's okay with me. | |
| They're released. Now, I don't know if anybody will, because NDAs are to the benefit of both parties, right? | |
| The people may not think it's worth it, but I love the fact that he just released them. | |
| He didn't even argue about it, right? | |
| There was no point in which he pushed back. | |
| He looked into it, he released them. | |
| I'd love to know what they say, but here's how I would respond to that. | |
| Mayor Bloomberg, what about those bad things you said about women? | |
| So I'd say some version of this. | |
| I don't recall what I said to offend, but let me confess to having an unfiltered sense of humor that can come off as offensive. | |
| So the first thing you need to do is totally own it. | |
| I think he does. I think he is totally owning it. | |
| But when he said he could have owned it a little better than to say, well, maybe a joke was taken wrong. | |
| If you say a joke was taken wrong, you're putting responsibility on the victim. | |
| So I think he did that wrong. | |
| He should have been a little more generous about taking it all. | |
| And I'll say my sentence again. | |
| I don't recall what I said to offend, so he's admitting he was offensive. | |
| But let me confess to having an unfiltered sense of humor that can come off as offensive. | |
| Now, why that's persuasive is that most people believe that they themselves have unfiltered sense of humors. | |
| It's very common. So everybody who thinks that of themselves Just heard him say that he was like them. | |
| Oh yeah, unfiltered sense of humor. | |
| Oh yeah, I've done that. | |
| I've had an unfiltered sense of humor. | |
| I'm a little guilty of that, so I get it. | |
| And then he admits that it can come off as being offensive. | |
| Here's the second part. I never intend to offend. | |
| Intentions are really important. | |
| It's a theme I come back to. | |
| People are judging people by their actions and And we infer their intentions. | |
| Oh, he's racist, he's whatever. | |
| So you should say directly what your intentions were. | |
| Because that's what people are looking for. | |
| And for some reason, politicians don't speak that way. | |
| They should say, my intention is this. | |
| If it doesn't work out, then we'll change something. | |
| But the intention is to do this. | |
| So I'd say you never intended to offend, and I apologize unreservedly for any discomfort I caused. | |
| So any kind of apology like that is good. | |
| And then here's what I would add. | |
| I would say, I think society as a whole has gotten smarter about that stuff. | |
| And everybody would agree. | |
| It's like, oh yeah, society has evolved. | |
| And then I would say, and I welcome you to judge me by my current behavior. | |
| Do you see what I did there? | |
| I just basically said, we've all evolved, so we're all better than we used to be. | |
| Judge me by my current behavior. | |
| I'm not really that same person I was 20 years ago, because guess what? | |
| Neither are you. None of us are the same people we were 20 years ago. | |
| We've all gotten smarter. Judge me by who I am today. | |
| Now, imagine if he had said that instead of, well, some people took my joke wrong. | |
| Which really did put the blame on the victim, if you will. | |
| Alright, so I think Bloomberg probably could do a whole lot better fixing the holes he has. | |
| I think he's owned it all, which is important. | |
| And he's shown a track record of success that seems relevant to the presidency. | |
| He's already shown that he can buy the presidency. | |
| Now here's the other hidden magic of what Bloomberg is doing. | |
| Do you think that if Bernie is the candidate, Bloomberg will spend his hundreds of millions to get Democrats elected in Congress? | |
| Would he? Because remember, Bloomberg thinks that Bernie's policies would be a disaster. | |
| So if Bloomberg, if you can imagine a scenario where Bernie gets the nomination... | |
| Bloomberg might turn off the spigot, right? | |
| If I understand Bloomberg's position, he thinks that Bernie would be a disaster. | |
| So I don't think he's going to help fund more Democrats to have a stronger position in Congress if that would make Bernie capable of getting what he says he wants. | |
| So, the biggest problem that the Democrats have is if they nominate a centrist, even if it's not Bloomberg, they probably still get Bloomberg's money. | |
| You know what I mean? But if they nominate, I would say, either Bernie or maybe Warren, I think Bloomberg would turn it off because he doesn't want those policies to become national policy. | |
| So, If you take all of the things I've said together, which is Bloomberg did nothing to hurt himself, did a really good job of saying his accomplishments, took full ownership of the things he's criticized for, and I think he did that... | |
| I'd give him a C- at handling those flaws, but they're not deadly because he's accepted them fully, which really takes the power out of them. | |
| When you add in the power of his money that would not accrue to the Sanders candidacy, and you throw in the fact that he doesn't act his age, and you throw in the fact that he had a little more personality, but wouldn't you say, even on that stage, even though he doesn't have the million wattage personality of a Trump, on that stage he had more charisma than most, wouldn't you say? | |
| Let me ask you. No, I still think he'll be slaughtered by Trump. | |
| I don't think Trump has any realistic chance of losing unless something new happens between now and election that's unanticipated. | |
| Somebody says he's unlikable. | |
| I don't know about that. | |
| I do not find Bloomberg unlikable. | |
| He's not fun. | |
| But he looks sincere. | |
| I don't think he's lied. | |
| He's got a track record, and he's not acting his age, and he's got a kajillion dollars. | |
| I think he's the guy to beat right now. | |
| So we'll see if the Democrats are clever enough to give him the nomination. | |
| I'm not predicting that they will. | |
| I'm just saying that he's certainly the one who has the commanding advantage right now. | |
| It may be too late, though. All right. | |
| Coronavirus. Yeah. | |
| I don't know what to believe about this coronavirus. | |
| The only thing I'm sure of is that our data is bad. | |
| I do think there's a non-zero chance that we will be asked, we citizens, will be asked to stay out of public gatherings for a few weeks. | |
| I think that's likely. | |
| But we're not going to die. | |
| Most of us. Some of us will. | |
| I shouldn't laugh about this, but the Iranian politician who was in charge of the coronavirus response in Iran apparently got the coronavirus and And the reason everybody knew about it is that he was on TV doing an announcement and he was sweating like a pig and he was obviously suffering from it. | |
| But the other interesting part is that that politician, at least based on one thing I saw, I'm not certain this is a fact, so fact check me on this, but I believe that politician who has been confirmed to have the coronavirus met with the Ayatollah Right before that. | |
| I mean, I don't know if it was the same day or recently. | |
| But think about that. | |
| The Ayatollah met personally with this guy who has the coronavirus. | |
| The coronavirus isn't deadly to most people, but it's pretty dangerous if you're a certain age, and the Ayatollah is. | |
| There is a non-zero chance that the coronavirus will change the regime in Iran. | |
| Think about that. I mean, I don't know what the odds are. | |
| Probably 5%. But it's out there. | |
| Alright, that's all I've got for now. |