Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is running against Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary for president. Is it a race to the right or the left? Should Bloomberg or Bernie be the nominee? What s the difference between the two? And what s the best way to win the primary?
00:02:50.040But, you know, the more I thought about it, the more I thought, like,
00:02:52.960there's actually no real downside to Bloomberg winning.
00:02:56.220From our perspective, that would be any worse than Bernie or Trump.
00:02:59.620Because the one thing Bloomberg, I think, could do is that if he does win, he'll have to steal the nomination from Bernie using his appeal to the non-white demographic.
00:03:10.280And so if he wins, he's going to ride into office of this just, you know, stealing of the win by cynical use of demographics and non-whites.
00:03:19.200And, you know, that's going to put the left in a tricky position where they're going to see that their populist movement of Bernie Sanders was stolen from them by, you know,
00:03:29.920a Jewish neoliberal capitalist that used non-white demographics in his favor.
00:03:35.580And I think it would also, as much as I can see the arguments for Bernie winning, I think from our perspective, it'd be bad in some ways if Bernie gets in,
00:03:44.300because I think it'll set back political discourse in that he's not going to get any of the real socialist policies he wants done.
00:03:52.220He's going to be stymied the whole four years.
00:03:54.760But the right is going to revert to this.
00:03:56.860And the right is going to revert to this sort of, you know, Paul Ryan, Venezuelan socialism, Cold War talking points.
00:04:06.280I just don't think it would be a good direction for anyone.
00:04:09.380But if Bloomberg wins, I mean, there's no longer going to be the middleman of someone like Trump that still sort of represents populist nationalist sentiment.
00:04:18.800It's just going to be this, you know, again, unashamed plutocrat, technocrat.
00:04:22.860And he'll be he'll be a perfect representation of what the United States is.
00:04:27.700And, you know, finally, we can have a proper political discussion and people can see can see what the U.S. is and what it represents.
00:04:34.420And they'll see that, you know, the head of the snake is neoliberalism, is, you know, social liberalism and multiculturalism.
00:04:41.960And Bloomberg represents all of that perfectly.
00:04:44.440And it is funny, actually, when you're talking about, you know, the story of Bernie versus versus Bloomberg.
00:04:50.020You know, when you compare Bloomberg to Trump, like in many ways, Bloomberg captures that sort of Republican vision of America a lot better than Trump.
00:04:59.480Like Trump inherited his fortune and benefited from the biggest tax break in New York state history.
00:05:05.660And Bloomberg genuinely did like toil his way up to success.
00:05:09.080So that's that's kind of a funny comparison as well.
00:05:58.000He will throw 600,000 people up against the wall in order to make sure that the trains run on time in New York City and that neoliberalism can continue.
00:06:09.280Like, if Trump had lost in 2016, we'd probably be sitting here now saying, you know, if only Trump had won, can you imagine there'd be a massive wall on the border?
00:06:19.800You know, he'd be running it as this, like, quasi-fascistic state.
00:06:23.680But after four years, you know, you know what the reality is.
00:06:26.500And what's going to come of another four years of Trump?
00:06:29.500Like, it's going to be four more years of Charlie Kirk token points.
00:06:32.460It's going to be four more years of people just silently being displaced, losing their country.
00:06:36.820And, you know, it's just four more years of slow crushing defeat.
00:06:42.220You know, let's just go one way or the other, you know.
00:06:45.080Why sit around for another four years and just wait for more of this?
00:06:48.220Yeah. And before Ed jumps in, I mean, there's this interesting discussion, you know, in our circles and in really any circles that are marginalized of accelerationism.
00:06:59.700And it goes back to an apocryphal quote, the worse, the better, from Lennon or someone.
00:07:07.820But so, you know, we kind of flip between, oh, we're going to get our guy in there and he's going to bring about a utopia for us.
00:07:15.840And then we flip over to the other side of that coin, which is we should just have the worst possible person in there who just makes everything totally nuts and the system collapses and then we take over.
00:07:26.400Both of those are fantasies, actually, and none of them are really that productive.
00:07:31.840I don't think Bernie is an accelerationist candidate at all.
00:07:36.500First off, I think he's going to have a hard time enacting his agenda because of the Supreme Court, because of opposition, his own party, and just the wheels turn slowly in Washington.
00:07:47.360But even if he were able to enact it, I don't think it would be radically accelerationist.
00:07:57.480Even when he talks about the race issue, it's all about, oh, these other people want to separate us on the basis of race, but we're going to all come together on the basis of Medicare for all.
00:08:15.760There will be divisiveness if Bernie gets in, but it will be the divisiveness of Bernie's supporters will be blaming, you know, the patriarchal white male Republican Party for stymieing this populist uprising.
00:08:30.660And, you know, people on the right will be, again, these, like, nonsensical talking points about Venezuela and socialism.
00:08:36.600All the wrong things are going to be discussed.
00:08:39.280It's going to further entrench this sort of false binary between, like, you know, the sort of open borders, like woke capital socialism of the Bernie bros.
00:08:49.560And then, like, I don't know what you call, like, boomer Republicanism, like neoliberal talking points.
00:08:55.120It would double down on the problems of Trump.
00:09:00.300Just to stick with this real quick on the Bernie side, and then we'll talk about Bloomberg.
00:09:04.040It would accelerate the whole problem of Trump, which is that in January 2017, and actually a little bit before that, he adopted conservatism.
00:09:15.120So, Trump did a few things, like the Muslim ban, which isn't an actual Muslim ban, and all this kind of stuff.
00:09:23.740But his agenda has been Paul Ryan's agenda.
00:09:27.860And the people stalking his administration are conservatives.
00:09:32.840They're some Tea Party people, some old line Republicans.
00:09:36.180And the conservative movement has embraced him, and he has embraced the conservative movement.
00:09:40.040And that was not the dynamic in 2015 and for most of 2016, which was he couldn't show up to CPAC because they were going to attack him as a nationalist socialist or something like that.
00:09:53.500Now he shows up to CPAC, and he's a superstar.
00:09:57.880But it's not like they've really changed.
00:10:00.380His nationalism was so vague that it could just be kind of funneled into, you know, black unemployment's down, the stock market's up, you know, billionaires are getting tax cuts, Apple has higher profits this quarter.
00:10:25.540Whereas, if Bloomberg's in there, and I know this is a bit fantastical, and it's a bit of a meme, but if Bloomberg's in there, that thing that Zizek called for, and that thing that I've called for, and so on, of getting away from conservatism,
00:10:43.960and there being a kind of neither left nor right or maybe both left and right unity against the system, a kind of the periphery against the system.
00:10:55.760I know how, like, I know how this is a long shot, and I know it's hard, but that is actually an interesting dynamic where the Bernie bro types, serious alt-right people,
00:11:08.540not your, like, you know, I'm a conservative Trump supporter, and I'm racist on weekends or something.
00:11:15.640Those kinds of people, they could get lost for all I care.
00:11:19.120But serious people who want to change the world can start finding a lot more in common through Mike Bloomberg,
00:11:27.280because there wouldn't be any pretense in the sense of, you know, in the sense of, like, oh, well, Trump's populist, and he's appealing to the people and evangelicals or whatever.
00:11:38.600It would be like, no, we have a literal oligarch, like, through fascistic means instituting oligarchy.
00:11:47.920You know, there's no pretense, there's no illusions, there's no, you know, bullshit rhetoric from Pete Buttigieg about America coming together and feeling loving each other and feeling unified.
00:12:01.420We just get rid of it all, and we deal directly with the problem.
00:12:07.180And in that sense, I think Bloomberg deserves to be president of this country, and I think it would actually be a great thing.
00:12:15.800It would introduce a new dynamic, it would introduce change, and from our perspective, change is good.
00:12:22.460And Trump, four years of Trump, we're just going to be fighting these same battles over and over again, you know, and people are going to continue to be deluded.
00:12:32.440And I think in terms of what Trump might do in a second term, most second-term presidents, they have a little bit of a window of political capital, and then they spend three years just farting around, basically.
00:12:43.640But if Trump re-elected and feeling like he has major political capital, I could see war with Iran, I could see a lot of just really awful stuff that conservatives would support.
00:12:56.920And with Bloomberg, it's like the face of oligarchy, that he looks like his policies, that oligarchy is literally ruling, and that is good.
00:13:07.420That is real accelerationism, and then it makes things clear.
00:13:10.860Yeah, could I make a point about this?
00:13:26.760So what did Trump getting in actually achieve?
00:13:29.780What it achieved was the left going mad, going bonkers, and a big crackdown on the right and on alternative media and on YouTube and whatever.
00:13:37.660So essentially, from our perspective, the dissident people on the right, it's been quite bad.
00:13:42.520And the good stuff that he said he'd do, stop immigration, build a wall, there's been minor things in that direction.
00:13:48.960But he essentially hasn't done what he said he'd do.
00:13:51.140Secondly, it strikes me that a fundamental problem with the American system since Roosevelt is that you have two-term presidents, and the second term, he's a lame-duck president for the whole time.
00:14:02.320If there could be a third term, a fourth term, and a fifth term, well, interesting things.
00:14:05.520But essentially, if you're re-elected, great.
00:14:07.620You're a successful president like Eisenhower or Clinton or anybody else that's been elected twice.
00:14:13.300But you're a lame-duck immediately, and people are therefore speculating on who's going to replace you.
00:14:29.340When that person's not really a Democrat, not really, not in any ideological sense, he's simply a rich man who wants to be president of a country, exactly like Trump.
00:14:38.600And let's not forget that in the 90s, I believe Trump was a Democrat, or he was toying with Democratic politics or something.
00:14:44.000Yeah, and Bloomberg was a Republican as well when he ran for mayor of New York.
00:14:48.960So basically, they're just wealthy men that want to buy the presidency of a country, go on the dollar, basically.
00:14:56.320So I like the idea of, as you say, of it being an overt, clear, no messing about, there is an oligarch who has purchased the presidency of America.
00:15:03.880I love the idea of a debate between them as well, like just two New York loudmouths that are just the worst of everything.
00:15:12.600And they're having a debate about how best to serve Israel's interests and who's the bigger Zionist.
00:15:21.100He won't do anything other than purchase eight years in power or four years in power, whichever it happens to be.
00:15:27.760So, and then often, of course, when there is more left-wing influence, then, of course, that's when the right, in terms of this acceleration, that's when the right regroup and actually do things because they're under pressure.
00:15:37.580As you say, there is a false sense of security, perhaps, in America to having a Republican president and a president who says, oh, build a wall and talks the talk.
00:15:47.040Let's get rid of that false sense of security.
00:15:49.060The only thing I can think that he achieved, really, for Trump, is YouTube bans for interesting people.
00:15:55.160I can't, and some other, some other things in economics, let's not subtract, you know, he's done some things.
00:16:00.860I mean, the economy apparently is doing a little bit better in America than it has been doing or, or the immigration is a little bit down or something like that.
00:16:06.860But I don't think it justifies the full consequences.
00:16:32.360And actually, I think it's kind of interesting, actually, because I was watching this video on the, this company called Theranos, this total con job that went from 9 billion to zero.
00:16:44.680A woman went from being a billionaire to being zero.
00:16:47.500She was just an absolute con artist and sociopath in so many levels.
00:16:52.220But I think that, that was a kind of representation, I think, a lot of the, the end of this kind of magical thinking that we had in the 2000s of, you know, with Steve Jobs being an icon of it, that, you know, it does, none of this really matters because there's going to be some outside the box, quirky college dropout genius who's going to just invent some new thing and change the world and we'll all get rich.
00:17:15.980I think actually that, that mythos was, you know, Steve Jobs kind of died at, his death was symbolic.
00:17:24.060I mean, he died at the peak of it and 10 years later, it's over.
00:17:28.100And, um, I, I don't think people think, they, they, they, they just don't buy into that false dream anymore.
00:17:36.100And, um, I, I, I, I think that is ultimately a good thing because that, that we, we get out of that illusion and we start working together in order to change the system.
00:17:46.860And we're going to have to change the alt, the, the alt-right, dissident right, whatever you want to call us, we, we're going to have to change.
00:17:53.320We can't be doing this own the libs, we're right-wing conservatives, whatever offends the libs is good.
00:18:00.940We're, we're just, we're, we're super conservative, tough guys or whatever.
00:18:03.960That, that kind of stuff just really needs to go.
00:18:07.420And I, I think we can start to, again, create a serious radical movement, uh, that is actually attracting people on the left.
00:18:19.500Uh, it's attracting people who don't even know who they are right now because they're, they're alienated from the system.
00:18:25.640And that, those are the types of people that we want to attract to have a serious movement where we can start really changing the discourses, the discourse and interesting, inserting new language into the, the way people think.
00:18:39.920I think these are all good things and it's what we need to do going forward.
00:18:43.640And this is the thing you echoed a lot of my sentiments there, but I think the way you should be looking at it is not where will the U.S. be in 2020, but where will it be in 2024?
00:18:52.160And, you know, with, with, uh, with the Bloomberg presidency, you know, I said in my video, just to kind of trigger people a little bit, that Bloomberg is like an ideal third position, but he's like, he's like a third positionist of all the worst elements.
00:19:26.400And, you know, some people say, Oh, it's so, it's so naive.
00:19:30.280It's, you know, Wignat saying that they can win over Bernie bros.
00:19:33.780I mean, they want to throw you in gulags, but there is, it's not about winning them all over or red pill in the mall.
00:19:38.600But I think, I definitely think that there's a large contingent of, of Bernie bros or, you know, people that are looking at the system sort of structurally that if they see Bloomberg just blatantly playing demographics to steal the nomination and to destroy this, this populist movement.
00:19:53.080And I do, I do think, you know, there'll be serious black pill in there and, you know, there will be scope for sort of the best of, of those people coming over and maybe something else forming by, by 2024.
00:20:03.420But that's really what it's about is where's the discourse going?
00:20:06.100Because I mean, with another four years of Trump, what's it going to be in 2024?
00:20:09.680Every right-winger will be off the internet.
00:20:13.020It'll just, you know, it'll be just, again, this slow sort of burn.
00:20:39.680And, you know, and it's worth saying, just to add here, in terms of, you know, actually caring about white people who are suffering right now, which if it is a, and this is certainly possible, if it is a Bernie versus Trump campaign, and you ask yourself, who is going to directly alleviate the suffering of white people?
00:21:08.140I think the answer is clearly Bernie and not Trump.
00:21:12.220And you can make some, you can talk about his comments on illegal immigrants or illegal immigrants.
00:21:24.260But I think in terms of who would do more for average white people, and particularly blue-collar whites who are suffering, I think it's clearly Bernie.
00:21:37.620It's not, I, if I were to vote for Bernie, it wouldn't be an accelerationist vote.
00:21:42.420It would be like, this guy's actually has some programs that could help people, and Trump is just going to be more of the same.
00:21:49.240You know, the Bloomberg factor would be very different, because it would be, you know, again, two neoliberals battling it out over who's the most scientist or something.
00:22:00.100It is, it is, it is the one, the one, the one thing, the one time I've become kind of left-wing is when I'm in America, and I see these toothless people who are toothless because they can't afford to go and see a dentist.
00:22:11.280Or who have, you know, bits of them chopped off because they haven't wanted to go and see a proper doctor or whatever.
00:22:17.620It's really, it's like England before the health service was brought in.
00:22:19.960In the UK, you had cases of women who had had hernias and held these hernias in with a bit of cloth tied up, and been like that for months and months or more.
00:22:31.320And then they finally get to go to a doctor without paying what they can't afford to pay, and then it gets fixed.
00:22:35.440I mean, it was absolutely dreadful before the health service was introduced.
00:22:38.100I don't understand why people should have to pay to see a doctor.
00:22:42.620You have to pay €20 to see a doctor, to see a state doctor, a rubbish doctor where you have an agency.
00:22:47.500You have to pay something like €70 for a 15-minute consultation with a private doctor.
00:22:52.760And it means that people have to think about, and they shouldn't have to, because thinking about, should I go to a doctor or not, when you've got a lump, is this important enough to go and see a doctor, is it not?
00:23:02.080That could be the difference between not dying.
00:23:03.940Or if you've got coronavirus, and you decide not to go to a doctor because you can't afford it, and you infect another 20 people.
00:23:13.520I don't know what the health care system is like in Italy, but perhaps that is relevant, because I get the impression that the people in northern Italy, or wherever it is, near the Austrian border, wherever it is, have died.
00:23:23.880If you've gone to the US, it's going to be very relevant, isn't it?
00:24:00.740You know, how much does it cost if you haven't got health insurance to go and see a doctor?
00:24:03.800It's just, it's pure bankruptcy almost immediately.
00:24:08.100I mean, the cost of health care, if something is serious, like, if you're battling cancer or really serious surgery, you're just simply going to go bankrupt.
00:24:19.880I mean, it's going to be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands.
00:24:43.780I was watching, I watched some of the Sticks Hexenhammer video there for my sins, and he was making the libertarian argument for this, which is that American health care is so expensive because it's not private enough.
00:24:56.460So, you know, all these Western countries that have per capita costs that are a quarter of the United States, you know, you could just go socialize and go to, you know, something around that.
00:25:05.600But, no, you should take a gamble, go more privatized, and you might actually get it cheaper than them.
00:25:09.760Yeah, I mean, there's a kernel of truth to that in the sense that we have, like, the worst of all possible systems in the sense that it's kind of socialized in the wrong way and then privatized in the wrong way.
00:25:24.880I mean, I could go with a libertarian argument that if we had just a pure free market, that there would be, like, a McDonald's of health care and things like that.
00:25:39.080But we're just not – people aren't willing to accept that.
00:25:42.840Conservatives are not willing to accept that.
00:25:44.480Like, the idea of taking away Medicare of conservatives, they will – if the boomers would, you know, actually riot over something, it might be that.
00:25:54.120And so we're in this system, and we need to find a way out of it.
00:25:58.760But where it is now is just utterly unbearable.
00:26:03.400And also, the insurance, what we've done, what we did with Obamacare – and Obamacare was originally, in the late 80s and early 90s, it was actually a Heritage Foundation project.
00:26:12.600So it was a conservative project, and then it was first implemented by Mitt Romney.
00:26:17.300And then Obama did it as this grand compromise, basically.
00:26:20.640And then conservatives called it socialism, even though they invented it.
00:26:24.020And what it basically does is, you know, we're afraid to be a socialist country.
00:26:30.240So we don't want to have a national health service where doctors are literally employees of the state, or we don't want to have a single-payer system.
00:26:38.720We want to have this system where we're kind of subsidizing the insurance industry and forcing people into it.
00:26:45.640And so it creates insurance that isn't insurance.
00:26:48.820Because insurance is something that you don't want to use and don't actually plan on using.
00:26:55.120You buy insurance on your house catching flame.
00:26:59.000Or, you know, insurance originated historically as merchants who would have ships going across the ocean.
00:27:05.280And they obviously did not want this to happen, and they didn't plan on it happening.
00:27:10.420But, like, compulsory health insurance is not insurance because you know you're going to use it.
00:27:41.340I mean, it's not, you're not even unhealthy.
00:27:44.120I mean, it's just, this is the world we live in right now.
00:27:46.740And so it's a kind of prepayment system.
00:27:49.360And then also, with your employment, so with your employer offering it to you, it's connecting you to this corporation.
00:27:59.460And, you know, obviously employers, employers love that.
00:28:03.080You know, a lot of people aren't quite willing to leave employment or search for another job or do something else, start a new business or whatever, because they don't want to lose their health plan.
00:28:24.580This is what, this is what fears me about, this is what fears me about Bernie getting the nomination is I'm already seeing people that were so on board with the MAGA movement in 2015 that were, like, borderline national socialists are now, like, attacking Bernie on, like, oh, he's going to, he's going to increase the deficit.
00:28:42.340And how is he going to pay for this spending plan?
00:28:44.340And it's, like, the libertarian alt-right pipeline is, like, suddenly going in reverse now.
00:28:49.360And there's, like, conversion on, like, Paul Ryan talking points.
00:30:11.540Like, you always see kind of, you always see people that are, you know, like low-info people that, like, love to use this analogy for everything.
00:30:20.340For a country like the United States, I mean, you know, the facts just say otherwise.
00:30:23.760And this is like the false dialectic it creates as well, because then when a Democrat is in office, you know, the Republicans just stifle him on spending.
00:30:32.080And he doesn't get any of the economic reforms done, but he gets all his terrible social reforms done.