The Next President of the United States

[RED-DOG]

Great stuff Minty. Thank you.

[Marky147]

+1 Red.

Shame Tulsi is dropping out, as she seems to be the best of the lot*

*from my ignorant pov, anyway

[MintTrav]

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Kamala will be free now for the Senate impeachment trial, though the other five Senators still running will also be required to attend.

[MintTrav]

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That’s Eric Swalwell on the right. It’s just a few weeks since he was telling Biden it was time to “pass the torch”, but he dropped out soon afterwards. Instead, he is back at the impeachment hearings, letting rip at any witnesses who support the President. It’s probably just as well he didn’t win. When you’re President you have to meet the Queen and everything - you wouldn’t want to have a nasty cough at the wrong time.

[MintTrav]

Biden, Sanders and Warren are well known but some of the others aren't so much, especially over here. Here's a little background. First....

The Billionaires
Running for President is damned expensive. Most candidates have to spend vast amounts of time raising donations (and making all kinds of commitments to get them). If your polling wanes even a little, donations can slow down and you have to make some difficult choices. Running low doesn't have to mean that it's all over for you - John McCain was reduced to taking scheduled flights for a while when the campaign wasn't going well, but recovered to clinch the nomination. Candidates try to hang on in the hope of something similar and, due to the varying profiles of the different States, there can quite often be a foreseeable route back. Beto O'Rourke and Kamala Harris raised a lot of money early on, but couldn't afford to keep the show going and dropped out. Julian Castro has closed both his New Hampshire and South Carolina offices to focus on Nevada and Iowa, and is hoping for a big result when his home State of Texas comes around. However, the writing is on the wall and he has advised his staff to look for jobs with other campaigns.

All this is normal, but what if you don't need donations? There are a few people who are free of money issues and have the resources to fund their campaign themselves, which obviously has a lot of advantages, the most obvious being that you can stay in the race for as long as you like, whether it's going well or not, without worrying about donations. You can also lament how donations are making politicians beholden to outside influences and even drop in suggestions of corruption. There is a disadvantage though - if you fund your campaign entirely, you won't get onto the debates. Candidates needed to have received money from 160,000 individual donors to get into the November debate and 200,000 donations are required for December.

John Delaney is a record-breaker. He has been officially campaigning since July 2017, a full year and a half before anyone else, in the longest active campaign anyone has ever undertaken. And most of that time has been spent in Iowa and New Hampshire. He has been running ads since February 2018 and last year he gave up the Congress seat he had held for six years so he could focus entirely on the campaign. He has poured millions of his own money into this ($24m at last count) and has managed to lift himself from unknown no-hoper to well-known middle-ranking no-hoper. He should start well (at least four local chairmen in Iowa have endorsed him), and he has the resources to stay in the race as long as he likes, but he is consistently at 0% in national polls. His thing is that politics is too partisan now and he would work with the other side. He is almost Republican in some of his views and has claimed that he is the most moderate candidate in the race, which would seem to be a sure-fire way to send your votes down the plughole.

Delaney isn't quite a billionaire, but he has acquired a quarter of a billion, which made him the richest member of Congress. He favours private healthcare insurance, which isn't surprising, as one of the businesses he has founded was a bank lending to healthcare providers (the second was a bank lending to small businesses). He didn't start rich though - his father was an electrician and he got to college through various scholarships, including one from his father's union.

Tom Steyer is even richer, a proper billionaire who began his career working at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, used to own a hedge-fund firm and also founded his own bank.
Steyer has supported mainstream Democratic Party candidates for a long time, donating $67m to them in the 2014 Mid-Terms and $87m in 2016, He was close to Hillary Clinton and Obama and was almost appointed to Obama's Cabinet a couple of times.

He has spent most of his time for the last couple of years trying to take Trump down and is well-known in the US for appearing on adverts calling for impeachment since almost the beginning of the current Presidency, which he has spent $10m on. He said earlier this year that he wouldn't run, so he could focus on impeachment, but later changed his mind and and has undertaken to spend $100m on his campaign. Perhaps surprisingly, many of his positions are quite left of centre, including a wealth tax similar to Warren's. He didn't have enough small donors to qualify for the September debate, but has managed to get enough to support him to qualify in Oct, Nov and Dec.

Curious fact - his father was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

Delaney and Steyer are paupers, however, compared with Mike Bloomberg. His $58bn fortune makes him the 14th richest person in the world (having given away over $8bn). Also self-made, Bloomberg started from nothing, became a partner at Salomon Brothers and was laid off with nothing to fall back on except $10m shares in the company. He started a business information company and it all took off from there. He became Mayor of New York and was re-elected twice, surviving a total of twelve years with his reputation relatively intact, though his 'Stop and Frisk' policy was hugely controversial and he has apologised for it since announcing his run. Bloomberg has been talked of as a candidate for at least the last three elections, and has finally jumped in, and immediately spent over $40m on adverts, and is now up to $60m. He has joined the race too late to get into the early States, so is focusing on Super Tuesday for a boost. It's going to be bizarre if he does make a strong run, as he won't get into the debates due to the donor requirement.

[MintTrav]

Tom Steyer has been devoted to impeachment for longer than anyone. He passed on running for Prez to devote his time to it but later changed his mind.

[MintTrav]

"Don’t Help Elect Trump, You Egotistical Billionaire Asshole"

Howard Schultz (worth $3.3bn), former CEO of Starbucks, did several interviews where he said he was likely to run against Trump, but as an Independent rather than a Democrat. Mike Bloomberg also flirted with the idea of running as an Independent but came to his senses and realised that it would just split the anti-Trump vote. This moment killed it for Schultz.

[MintTrav]

Forbes Magazine recently estimated the wealth (net worth) of the candidates. I'm a bit surprised that some of them aren't worth more, especially those at $1m-$2.5m, as the worth includes their equity in their homes. Buttigieg has a salary of $100k for being a mayor, but will be unemployed when his tenure runs out on 31 Dec. He has some investments, but also has $180k student debt, leaving a net of $100k. I guess Warren is the main surprise, though her calculated wealth includes her pension fund and two homes. Deval Patrick came in too late to be included, but he is believed to be worth about $4m. The Republican challengers also weren't listed, which was a pity, as Joe Walsh is believed to have negative worth.

Michael Bloomberg	$53.4bn
Donald Trump	$3.1bn
Tom Steyer	$1.6bn
John Delaney	$200m
Michael Bennet	$15m
Elizabeth Warren	$12m
Joe Biden	$9m
Kamala Harris	$6m
Joe Sestak	$6m
Beto O'Rourke	$4m
Bill de Blasio	$2.5m
Bernie Sanders	$2.5m
Jay Inslee	$2m
Amy Klobuchar	$2m
Cory Booker	$1.5m
Steve Bullock	$1.5m
Marianne Williamson	$1.5m
Kirsten Gillibrand	$1m
Seth Moulton	$1m
Andrew Yang	$1m
Julian Castro	$700k
Tulsi Gabbard	$500k
Tim Ryan	$500k
Pete Buttigieg	$100k

[MintTrav]

Biden tangled with a voter in Iowa.

The push-up thing was because the guy said Biden was too old.

Joe is taking some criticism for this, but it'll probably do him good overall.

[MintTrav]

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https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/02/greatest-republican-president

[MintTrav]

Can you buy the Presidency?

Mike Bloomberg spent almost twice as much on TV advertising in his first week in the contest as all the other candidates added together have spent over the whole year, excluding Steyer.

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It has virtually all been spent in Super Tuesday States, and specifically just in the biggest delegate-rich ones, ie Texas, Florida and Cali.

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[MintTrav]

After a couple of dodgy weeks where they missed some open goals, SNL hit its stride this week.

[MintTrav]

The President is responsible for everything and has a heavy schedule, so he has been focussing on the really important issues.

[Marky147]

That guardian clip is almost funnier than the SNL one. Amazing.

[MintTrav]

Biden’s resilience has been as stable as it has been unexpected. He came in around 30% and has just stuck there, while others have come up and faded again. The party leaders were expecting him to run into difficulties from one or more of several sources - Joe’s gaffes, his son’s activities, attacks from other candidates, his age, Obama’s shadow, so they had Harris in place to take over. When she fell back, it seems she was just holding centrist votes that could help Joe, so she was told to shift. Those issues have all arisen and have had no effect on his support. With Warren and Buttigieg falling back, it’s already looking like this may quickly become a two-horse race between him and Sanders. Most polls now have Biden at 28-30% and Sanders in the low 20s or just below 20%, with Warren further back and Pete around 8-9%. Bloomberg still sticking around 5-6%. Potentially, with the amount of advertising he is doing, he could shoot up, but he is probably just there as the new reserve in case Biden blows up. It’s looking more and more like it’s Biden’s to lose and there hasn’t even been any voting yet. We have been here more than once before, though, when it didn’t work out as it seemed at the start of election year.