The Las Vegas Debate Was Bloomberg’s Own Waterloo

DB Daily Update ^ | David Blackmon

[EyesOfTX]

He never should’ve agreed to participate in that Las Vegas debate. – One of the best ways to gauge the state of a multi-candidate presidential nominating race is to follow the betting odds. The polling business in the United States has become too corrupt now to really trust, other than to use aggregates of polls over time to assess trends.

Another problem with the polls is that so many people – like yours truly – simply lie to pollsters about who they really support. Some do it due to social stigma about supporting specific candidates; others, like me, do it because they just basically detest polling operations and the way so many have allowed themselves to become tools of corrupt media organizations. I personally haven’t spoken the truth to any pollster since Rush Limbaugh implemented “Operation Chaos” during the 2008 Democratic primary race between Obama and the Pantsuit Princess.

But the betting odds are a different animal entirely. These odds aren’t calculated just from average people telling their opinions to some stranger on the telephone; to the contrary, these are calculated from people putting their money where their mouths are. Few, if any bettors are going to slap down a hundred bucks on some candidate they believe to be a looooser just to distort the results tabulated by RealClearPolitics.

Right? Right.

Using the RCP aggregate of betting odds as a primary gauge, the disastrous debate showing by Mr. Excitement, Mike Bloomberg, last Wednesday is going to have a major negative impact on his polling numbers and, by extension, on his ability to accumulate votes and maybe even win a state or two in the March 3 Super Tuesday primaries.

Just nine days ago, The Commie held a shaky 5-point lead over Mini-Mike in this important gauge of public sentiment, with Sanders pulling in 39% of the money being bet and Mr. Excitement 34%. That Commie lead began to expand, though, as video after video began to surface of Mini-Mike making horrific public statements offending all manner of traditional Democrat interest groups. By the time debate day came around, the Sanders lead had grown to 17 points.

In the three days since Bloomberg’s Vegas Waterloo, the bottom has dropped out. The Commie’s support has jumped up over 50% for the first time, while Mr. Excitement has crashed down to 22%. It is very likely that that near-30% gap between the two will only expand after Sanders scores what is going to be a big winning margin in the Nevada caucuses.

Before that debate took place, Mini-Mike had actually moved into slight polling leads in both Oklahoma and Arkansas, and was becoming competitive in a couple of the other Super Tuesday states, based solely on the strength of $300 million spent on TV and social media ads. In polling released over the next 7-10 days, we will likely see those leads go poof!, as the impacts of his debate catastrophe begin to show up in the polling data.

I told you on the morning of the debate that there was no possible benefit for Bloomberg to appear in that debate: He wasn’t even on the ballot in Nevada – why take the risk of having exactly the horrific debate performance he in fact had? And there was no way this near-terminally boring old man who hadn’t participated in a debate setting in a dozen years was going to have a good night against a pack of desperate animals who have been doing nothing but debating and running their mouths for almost a damn year now.

Mr. Excitement is also not on the ballot in South Carolina, yet he has agreed to participate in this coming week’s Democrat debate in that state. Why? Well, now he pretty much has no choice, does he? Given that the South Carolina primary comes just 3 days before Super Tuesday, Tuesday night’s debate in Charleston will literally be Mini-Mike’s last gasp chance to stage a recovery from his massive failure in Vegas.

You have to believe he will have a better performance in Charleston than he did last Wednesday, just due to practice. In fact, he really did better in the second hour of his first debate, as he seemed to sort of gain his tiny footing on-stage and at least begin to fight back at his tormentors. Plus, he will have had 6 additional days to try to buy some of the other candidates, along with the moderators, off, which is his normal modus operandi. Any success in that realm would also be helpful.

But here’s the thing: This last desperate chance scenario did not need to happen. Mr. Excitement could have easily justified sitting out these two debates due to the fact of his absence from the ballots in those states. He could have stayed on the sidelines and relied on his massive wealth to buy enough Super Tuesday votes to get a couple of wins and a strong enough showing overall to impede Sanders’ quest to become the nominee.

But my view is that it is now too late for Bloomberg to recover from his blunder: Sanders’ coming big win in Nevada is going to lend his campaign an air of inevitability, one that will most likely lead to a narrow win in next Saturday’s South Carolina primary. At that point, the race to see who can accumulate the most delegates heading into July’s convention in Milwaukee will be over, and, if Biden and Warren drop their campaigns after March 3 as I believe they will, The Commie would even have a fighting chance of winning enough delegates over the next few months to prevail on a first ballot at that convention.

In the end, what we see here is that the Waterloo analogy is incredibly apt: Mr. Excitement’s decision to participate in the Las Vegas debate was a fatal strategic blunder committed by a little man consumed with unbridled hubris.

History repeats.

That is all.

[princess leah]

There is no way this ends well if Hillary gets the nod after a brokered convention....The DNC needs to let the primary play out and if Bernies has the most delegates, then you give him the super delegates and allow him to lose....Like Trump said, in the end it wont’t matter who they put up, so let Bernie take the loss and they can regroup for 2024.

[EVO X]

“So...Where do people’s votes go?”

Good question. For the last election, Bernie was hired on to be a ringer. He ended up getting ~40%+ of the vote and damaged Hillary’s mojo. He is not at the 40% level yet, but as candidates drop out he will reclaim some of his former support and maybe more.

Wikipedia has an article on the 2016 democratic primary results with charts. IMO, that shows why the democrats are panicking over Bernie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries

[MuttTheHoople]

Ever look at the main reason? The Democrats aren’t very bright. They try to hide their ignorance behind a wall of elitism.

[minnesota_bound]

Napoleon Bloomberg

[SaraJohnson]

He’s a tiny man with an ego as big as Texas.

[nascarnation]

I give him credit for being very successful in business.
But that success produced extreme hubris which makes him think he’s qualified to run everyone else’s life.

However his huge election spending is probably helping Trump’s economic statistics...Bloomie’s jobs program for advertising.

[Jolla]

Spent 6 hours over 3 different walks on tour it was great. Hougamont was closed so only got to go around it, but opens this week for the season. Gettysburg, The Alamo, Normandy and Waterloo, about done with my battlefield tours.