Bloomberg Claims NRA Helped Sanders

by Daveda Gruber:

As of Monday, the internal war in the Democratic party is in full bloom. The former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, started to attack Senator Bernie Sanders I-Vt., on gun control issues.

Just ahead of the South Carolina Democratic presidential debate Tuesday, Bloomberg posted an ad on his Twitter account that hits Sanders hard on his views for the use of guns.

The ad displays Sanders taking pro-gun stances in Congress and accuses Sanders of getting elected to Congress with the help of the NRA multiple times.

In the ad a 1990 letter by chief Wayne LaPierre of the NRA is cited. It shows that Sanders is a better choice for Vermont than former Republican Representative Peter Smith. An assault-weapons ban was backed by Smith.

The caption on the ad reads, “With that letter, and thousands of dollars in advertising, the NRA helped elect Bernie Sanders to Congress. Sanders voted with the NRA and opposed federal background checks by trying to block the Brady Bill 5 [sic] times.”

Here is the ad posted on Twitter by Bloomberg:

The timing of the ad comes at a critical time because Sanders won big in the Nevada caucuses. Sanders, on the other hand, had a very poor showing in the Nevada Democratic debate.

Bloomberg has donated large sums of money to anti-gun groups and even started his own anti-gun organization which is called “Everytown for Gun Safety” in response to the Sandy Hook mass shooting.

The organization then helped organize students who witnessed or were affected in another mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

In 2012 Sanders had a bad rating of a D-minus from the NRA. Sanders, in reality, is no friend of the NRA or pro-gun lobbyists.

Sanders tweeted out this:

The Bloomberg ad shows Sanders’ quotes on Vermont being a “rural” state and that Sanders voted with the NRA in 2005 that ensured gun manufacturers would not be held responsible for crimes committed with their products.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that allowed Sandy Hook families to sue Remington Arms, which is the gun manufacturer, in state court.

We are seeing a pattern that shows that before a Democratic debate, issues are brought to light by the 2020 candidates and that those issues are brought into the attacks on each other on the stage on live TV in front of millions of viewers.

My presumption is that Bloomberg may attack Sanders on gun control issues during the upcoming debate in order to not come across as weak as he did in the debate in Nevada.

Will it work for Bloomberg? Time will tell.

Aren’t election years fun? This election has our freedom at stake and yet I find the players on the Democratic side to be somewhat pathetic but possibly fun to watch them destroy each other.

Bloomberg Trashes Trump with Romney Ad

by Daveda Gruber:

Senator Mitt Romney, R-UT., as we all know, voted to impeach President Trump on the first article of impeachment, which was the abuse of power article from the House of Representatives.

What Romney did with his cross-party vote was despicable in the minds of many in the GOP and also in the beliefs of supporters of Trump.

On the other hand, Democrats jumped on the chance to use Romney’s words for their personal benefit.

Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is spending a lot of money, reportedly about $300 million, on TV advertisements and seized the opportunity to use the Romney speech on the Senate floor.

Romney’s speech was spliced and the verbiage was well chosen to deliver the message in a conglomeration that could hurt Trump the most.

The commercial ends with “The president was wrong. Vote him out.”

The goal of the ad is to target moderate voters in key general election states. Some of the states to be targeted are:

Michigan

Wisconsin

Pennsylvania

But the 30-second spot will air on the Internet on Facebook, YouTube, and Google and will target at least nine different states.

Here is the advertisement:

Do you think Romney understands the impact his decision to vote against Trump has made? Do you think he cares? Romney was and always will be a swamp creature in my eyes.

I can always be reached on Twitter to discuss your political views.

@DavedaGruber

Will there be a Brokered Democratic Convention?

by Daveda Gruber:

It appears that there is no clear frontrunner in the Democratic race for the leadership of the party.

The Iowa caucuses are less than six weeks away and there is no outright favorite. In more than a half of a century we have not seen a convention that goes beyond a first ballot but we may see it happen.

If this first ballot does not work out, and it certainly looks like that is a possibility,  we will see a brokered or contested convention.

The last time that either of the major party nominating conventions went past a first ballot was 1952. In that year Adlai Stevenson won the Democratic nomination on the third ballot.

Kathy Sullivan, the Democratic National Committee member from New Hampshire, recently said, “It could happen, it would be exciting to see it go past the first ballot because it would be so unusual.”

Sullivan added, “It’s been a long, long, long time since there’s been a second ballot at a Democratic convention.”

Even if the possibility of a brokered convention is not a strong possibility, conditions in this race could possibly lead to no candidate holding a clear majority of delegates when they head into the July Democratic convention in Milwaukee.

Here’s where the electoral college comes into play. We’ve all heard about superdelegates. These delegates are the party elders and insiders. But the superdelegates were stripped of their power in the 2016 primary battle. After all, Hillary Clinton was destined to win, if only in the minds of the Democrats.

This upcoming election does not have a presumed frontrunner so the superdelegates could become important and their powers would be activated.

They would be free to boost the candidates of their choosing. Their choice is not an easy task. Who could possibly beat the incumbent, President Trump? None, as far as I can see.

The top tier consists of four candidates. They are former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

The donors to the Democrats are a diverse group. Sanders, Warren and even a long shot candidate like tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang could see their campaigns funded by people-powered donations into the primary process.

Online contributions are interfering with the once powerful wealthy donors  who still back more establishment candidates and those candidates would be Biden or possibly Buttigieg.

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and environmental advocate Tom Steyer are pouring hundreds of millions of their own money into their own campaigns. That alone could keep them going if they can manage to hang in the race long enough.

If three or four contenders are still standing when heading into April, they would all fall short of the 1,919 delegates that are needed to clinch the nomination on the first ballot.

Sullivan explained, “You’d have to have a situation where multiple candidates come out of the first four states with wins. You’d go into Super Tuesday and have some candidates concentrating in certain states, others in other states, because it’s very expensive to run in all the states on Super Tuesday. Not all the candidates can afford to do that.”

She went on to say, “So if we come out of Super Tuesday with no clear leader and then it becomes a state-by-state contest and then we end up in New York towards the end of April. If after that point we still don’t have [a clear leader], then yes, it goes to the convention and conceivably a second ballot.”

Democratic governors, senators, representatives, former high-ranking lawmakers and leading party officials, who make up the superdelegates, all backed their favorite candidate, Clinton, in 2016.

But after the 2016 election, the DNC pulled back the influence of superdelegates because of the anger of Sanders and his army of progressive supporters.

Now, the superdelegates are only unbound if the convention reaches a second round.

Then there is another scenario.

If one of the candidate gets strong in the early states, the nomination race could be over pretty fast.

In 2004 when then Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts wrapped his nomination early.

If the battle between the candidates goes to a second ballot in Milwaukee, Sullivan maintains that we shouldn’t expect to see a repeat of the contested conventions from the history books.

Sullivan said, “People refer to brokered conventions, which leads you to think of people in smoke-filled rooms making deals, cutting deals. I don’t think you’re going to see deal-making going on because all these people [delegates] are free agents. It would be a very democratic process.”

A Democratic process? Is she suggesting that the 2016 process wasn’t? No, Clinton was the clear choice for everyone in the party even if they cheated Sanders out of it.

Unfortunately for them, they were all wrong. They backed their candidate without any thought that Trump would or could defeat their choice for president.

Personally, I believe Trump will be the winner no matter who the Democrats put up against him.

If I were a Democrat, which I am not, I’d be panicking about now.

New Poll Shows These Candidates Leading

by Daveda Gruber:

A new national poll shows who is leading the still large group of Democrats in the race to become the presidential nominee for 2020.

In a NPR PBS News Hour Marist poll released on Monday which was conducted by Public Opinion Director Lee Miringoff, former Vice President Joe Biden is at 24 percent and Bernie Sanders D-VT, at 22 percent in the polling of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent voters. The numbers are within the survey’s sampling error.

The poll was conducted between December 9th and 11th, with 1,508 registered voters nationwide, which included 704 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. They were questioned by live telephone operators. The margin of error for questions on the Democratic presidential primary is plus or minus 5.4 percentage points.

Other candidates are Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth is at 17 percent after slipping slightly in the poll. South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who was a long-shot climbed to 13 percent support.

Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang is at 5 percent and Senator Cory Booker  D-NJ., Senator Amy Klobuchar D-MN., and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg all at 4 percent.

Senator Michael Bennet D-CO, Representative Tulsi Gabbard D-HI, and former Obama housing secretary and former San Antonio, Texas Mayor Julian Castro are all at 1 percent.

All other candidate else registered at less than 1 percent.

The next debate is scheduled for December 19, 2019 at 9:00 PM at Gersten Pavilion at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.

The field is large and diverse but the question in most American’s minds is can anyone of these candidates beat President Trump.

What say you? Can a Democratic candidate beat Trump?