Thread by @AlexandraErin

So, Bloomberg dropping out is honestly the biggest ray of sunshine possible in the primary season, albeit that this is only true because of the cloud he hung over it in the first place.

Him winning the nomination would have been disastrous. And if he beat Trump... okay, for Biden or any of the mini-Bidens, we'd take a few steps backwards along the path to the current disaster without getting off it. Not great! But better than where we are now.

Bloomberg?

Bloomberg would be another tinpot dictator, with a different style than Trump but many of the same bigotries. We'd be trading a guy who is willing to see the whole world burn for a guy who is willing to strategically burn the parts of the world he's not standing in.

Oh, that gave me a big, Santa Claus-style happy belly laugh at the thought. I had not considered the possibility. Oh, boy, would that be poetry. Here's hoping! What if he keeps his influencer and billboard campaign for Biden? Oh, please let this be so!

https://twitter.com/SharedProphet/status/1235237459702755328

Sorry, had to share that wonderful bit of hope and joy with the rest of the thread.

Anyway. To someone like Bloomberg who is willing to circumvent rules and norms (like getting an exceptional term), right after Trump is the worst possible time for him to take power.

Because Trump has destroyed so many of the strictures and structures that Bloomberg would have dealt with more circumspectly. Because so much of the country is in a desperate condition (coronavirus emergencies may be ongoing or looming to flare up in January 2021!)

Whoever follows Trump, especially if they're a white man, will inherit a lot of the "could shoot a guy in broad daylight on 5th avenue" of the position from him. He's changed the meaning of what it is to be president so completely, and we as a nation have mostly swallowed it.

I said last night that Bloomberg was the wrinkle I couldn't shake in my pledge of Vote Blue No Matter Who, because I honestly can't say he would be better or worse than Trump, just different.

And now he's out. So I'm relieved.

But every election is bigger than any election, and there's a larger lesson here that also makes me hopeful and joyous:

It turns out, you can't buy the presidency. You can't buy an election on a national scale. Money matters! Money amplifies your message. You need money,s ure.

Turns out, to our great relief, that while money is a necessary condition for a presidential campaign, it is not a sufficient one. You can't win on money alone. It does matter what the money is amplifying.

Now, while I'm #TeamSunnyOptimism, I'm not #TeamBabesInArms. While a billion dollars is not enough to buy the presidency, it's absolutely disgraceful what a few paltry thousands in campaign contributions can get you on Capitol Hill. We really do need to get money out of politics.

But, so long as money is in politics, it's good to know its influence has limits, and it's good to know that one of those limits is this.

It's a messy primary season and it's just getting started, but there are a lot of hopeful signs coming out of last night. The Democratic Party, and by that I don't mean the DNC or delegates or politicians but I mean voters is charged up, growing, and highly motivated.

Even with the massive and embarrassing stumbling block that was the Iowa Caucus, even with the so-called president of these benighted states actively sowing discord and mistrust... we had a historic Super Tuesday.

I've been saying since 2015 that when people vote, Democrats win.

Turnout, turnout, turnout. There's a reason the GOP puts more time and energy into getting people to just not vote than they do into getting people to come vote for them. They can't win on ideas. They can't win on solutions. They can't win on numbers.

So they kill the numbers.

If they can kill the numbers, then the ideas and solutions don't matter.

That's why there are voter purges and poll closures and other suppression tactics in places that are critical to them, aimed at gutting the numbers of likely Democratic voters.

They target college students, they target poor neighborhoods, they target communities of color, they target Black voter strongholds. They make it as close to impossible to vote as possible, and then they try to give us as many reasons to give up as possible.

Back in the 2016 cycle, armchair GOP strategists like Scott Adams and actual shakers like Rush Limbaugh were openly discussing strategies for just talking about the election in ways that would make it sound pointless to vote.

And they're still doing it. They're still doing it, because it's a winning strategy for them. All the talk about a rigged primary, all the talk about how [whoever] can't possibly win if they're the candidate... they deliberately amplify and inflame that.

People vote, they lose.

They don't want people to vote.

But the turnout yesterday -- and as I promised last night, I'm loading up tab after tab of article about that -- suggests that it's not working. The Democratic base and new voters alike are tuned in and turning out to defeat Donald Trump.

I have high hopes that the highly engaged segments of the party will come together by July more than seems possible at the moment, but even failing that, the turnout we had even at this fractious point is promising. There is life outside of Twitter, after all.

As much as the GOP is trying to look on the bright side of the in-fighting and factionalism... I mean, as I've said many times, that's basically just regular politics.

The turnout has the smart ones worried, I promise you.

So this is a bruising primary and it's not going to get easier, but the long view is hopeful. If you don't know how to cope, my solution is keeping my eye on November. My candidate's not doing well and my second choice is shaky, but the endgame is dislodging Trump first.

We've gone from the worst outcome of winning being replacing Trump with Bloomberg to replacing Trump with Biden.

You know the difference between Biden and Trump?

Biden wants to see himself as a good man.

Trump wants to see himself as a great man.

We can work on Biden.

Nothing in life is guaranteed and the future is not promised to anyone. No one can say what will happen.

But right now our chances of getting rid of Trump in November are good and will likely get better.

So I woke up hopeful yesterday and I woke up hopeful today. That's two days in a row of feeling good about our chances, as a country and a world. I'll take it.

Voters in states across the country got up, lined up, and did what I've been asking people to do for four years.

They cried havoc and let slip the dogs of civic participation.

And the dogs howled, and gave chase. And the prey is not quite cornered but it's being run ragged.

We can win this thing. It's winnable. We can do it. It's doable.

I am hopeful. I have hope. #TeamSunnyOptimism

Anyway.

Mike Bloomberg probably isn't going to give me money even though I called him a ray of sunshine on Twitter. My hopeful punditry depends on tips.

paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr…