Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/11/michael-bloomberg-wins-first.html
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Well - may as well pack it up rest of the country- Gobblers Knob has spoken.
Edit:
I hope these media schmucks spend as much time talking to “average Americans” in West Philly coffee shops and Bronx barbers watching Michael Bennett getting a hair cut as we have on Iowa and this place.
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As I have said in the Boing Boing comments before, don’t underestimate Bloomberg. This is just what happened in nyc. He saw a bunch of amateurs thrashing around and took the opportunity. As a resident here, i can say it turned out ok for me. I like my now 10 year old street tree his program planted and my daughter’s public school became exponentially better under him. However, he failed on recognizing how real estate would become a cash haven and missed the opportunity to head that off with better zoning. But over all, the problems he created or left unaddressed on balance for me personally were worth it. I’m not actually sure what could have been done to better address affordable housing. De Blasio is 7 years in, close to being a social democrat, and it’s worse now than ever despite his best and well intentioned efforts. PS please don’t flame me. I’ll vote Bernie if he’s the person. Just Relaying what I’ve experienced.
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Older Americans and the corporate media love a folksy political tradition to distract them from how fundamentally broken and corrupted the system is; all the more so if the tradition is focused on older white people. The Iowa caucuses and this NH nonsense exist mainly for this purpose.
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Four years and one day ago…
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What’s “the Nation” that these ballots were “first” in? I thought Iowa already did its primaries…
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I would agree that Bloomberg improved a lot of things in NYC. However, this statement is almost insulting him.
Bloomberg, given the circles he travels in, was more aware than most that NYC real estate would become a cash haven. The zoning decisions (or benign neglect, if you prefer) were deliberate, and were aimed at cementing the idea that Manhattan and much of Brooklyn should be playgrounds for the wealthy and privileged and late-stage capitalism’s winners.
He may be making the right noises now about inequality being a problem, but his solution is going to reflect the same neoliberal-friendly policies of class and (when it comes to African-Americans and some LatinX groups) racial segregation and (admittedly effective) sops for non-millionaires we saw under his mayoral tenure in NYC.
NH diffentiates itself in this empty contest by saying that they do this by secret ballot where Iowa has a caucus. And then immediately undermines itself by holding its first votes in towns with five residents.
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I don’t disagree with you. It’s a real vulnerability for him. Yet still I think he is the best given the choices. I consider a Trump re-election an existential threat. For instance, what is he going to do if the Corona virus breaks out in nyc? He’s comfortable eliminating NYers express lane through customs and immigration as a penalty for giving undocumented aliens driving licenses. I don’t think he’d hesitate to shut the whole city down just to be vindictive on the slightest pretext. Or pick any other horrible scenario. There is no bottom to him.
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In what crazy world could two things that are equally small, isolated, white, luxury real estate-adjacent, maybe a little racist, and desperate for acknowledgement find love so easily? It’s beautiful.
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Even if one looks at Bloomberg’s candidacy from the short-term view of defeating Biff and putting off addressing the larger problems of late-stage capitalism for another 4-8 years (a view I don’t think we can afford), there’s this:
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Why on Earth would they do that? New Hampshire and Iowa reflect Real American values and are wholly representative of the country’s demographics and politics. Several dozen voters in Iowa have seen a black person in person at least once, with rumors of at least two voters having been friends with a black person in college. New Hampshire loses points for being on the coast, of course, but more than gains it back by keeping the non-white population at around 5%. THE REAL AMERICA.
The next crazy thing you’ll be saying that the media should give at least as much time to some of the tens of millions of voters in, say, Chicago/San Francisco/New York/Boston as it does to the states with populations smaller than any of those cities. Madness!
I don’t mean this to be overly confrontational, but yeah, some people do benefit from authoritarian oligarchs holding power. To be clear, I’ll vote for him early and often if he’s the nominee (and anyone who wouldn’t is implicitly willing to accept another 4 years of Trump to preserve their purity), but let’s not ignore the fact that he is an unfathomably wealthy man who isn’t exactly familiar with the day to day issues that the non-wealthy deal with. (to say nothing of the…problematic, let’s say…racial policies he’s pushed.
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Why is Bennett’s name on that whiteboard, but not some candidates who qualified for the most recent debate (Klobuchar, Yang, Steyer)? Were they expecting someone to vote for him?
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Came here to recommend the Stranglehold series as well. Was just listening to this yesterday about the history of Dixville Notch and how basically the whole “midnight voting” thing is total B.S. It’s a publicity stunt dreamed up by the owner of the only hotel in town to attract attention to himself and his business. In fact, it wasn’t even his idea - the idea originally was born out of the living room of Genevieve Nadig years earlier in a totally different town. Nobody actually lives in Dixville Notch and the “residents” voting eligibility is seriously in question.
The fact that the media continues to fall for this and portray this sham as something significant is the real story.
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Bloomberg was as closely in bed with developers and the financial class as Guiliani. That was the plan, largely had been since Lindsay with a few stalls. And while things worked out just fine on your street, in browner neighborhoods in the outer boroughs the schools got exponentially worse, and they went with stop and frisk over planting trees.
It’s nice that it worked out for you. But Bloomberg’s legacy in NYC is the exact state of vast income and social inequality we see tearing up the country at large.
Is widely criticized, even by members of his own administration, as an absentee mayor.
The policies that could reverse a lot of NYCs problems are well understood. De Blasio was elected on promises to enact them, and frequently talks about them or makes a show of kicking them off. But apparently his attention fades, and he delegates actually executing to others. Leaving them without support and funding. So everything rapidly curdles into failure and scandal.
That De Blasio was unable to reverse the pre-existing problems doesn’t mean they’re inevitable and immutable.
Iowa doesn’t hold a primary, they run a caucus. Caucuses are weird, don’t technically involve voting. And tend to have insanely low turnout, concentrated on the most politically extreme and enfranchised members of the population. Iowa is also not technically decided yet, there’s a final round/step to determine who gets what in terms of delegates for the DNC convention later this year.
To a certain extent it’s a meaningless distinction. But New Hampshire is the first state where large numbers of people actually vote in something resembling a formal election.
The focus on Dixville Notch seems to be mostly driven by the fact that you can’t find a smaller group of old white people to draw vast conclusions from.
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Now he has a new, not so secret weapon.
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Davis’s trigger finger — and a citywide police conspiracy — will be unduly tested when a cocaine heist goes awry and the thieves (Stephan James and Taylor Kitsch) escape by slaughtering eight police officers. Springing into action, Davis orders a complete blockade of Manhattan; with no way off the island, he and his blue army have just one night to catch the killers before the city implodes. Start the clock!
Please, not Klobuchar. Please.
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I think she’s got a solid shot at VP. But not at POTUS.
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I put the Democrat who wins in 2020 as the most-likely-to-be-murdered president of all time. VP has never sounded closer to president. (Apparently I just thought I had to insert some unnecessary darkness into the discussion)
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