Tag Archives: Tom Steyer

national news

Money can’t buy love … or votes?

Tom Steyer thought money could buy him a path to the White House.

He was mistaken. The billionaire folded up his campaign tent after the South Carolina votes were cast and he ended up with 11 percent of the total, several miles behind the lead piled up by Joe Biden.

What now? What lies ahead for the other billionaire in the Democratic Party presidential primary campaign, Michael Bloomberg, the ninth-richest person on Earth, who’s already spent a half-billion of his own dollars on this race?

He hopes to do well on Tuesday, aka Super Tuesday. Will he win any of the states where he’s been airing all those TV ads, such as in Texas? I doubt it.

Bloomberg ought to rethink this exercise in futility as well.

The former New York mayor entered the race vowing to defeat Donald J. Trump. The way I see it, the longer he is in the contest siphoning off votes that could go to another centrist who actually can beat DJT — Joe Biden — the more he helps Trump than hinders his path to re-election.

Bloomberg has crashed and burned at two debates. He doesn’t play well live and in person. He looks disinterested, annoyed and cannot craft anything resembling the kind of sharp rhetoric one needs to develop a message.

Furthermore, I just am one Democratic-leaning voter who doesn’t believe he is faithful to the party to which he purports to belong. He ran for NYC mayor as a Republican; then he became an independent; now he’s a Democrat. He’s good on gun issues and on climate change. What else? Who knows?

As for Bernie Sanders, I do not want a “movement” leader or a “revolutionary” to carry the banner against Donald Trump. I much prefer a seasoned, veteran politician with a record of actual accomplishment to take the fight to the carnival barker in chief.

To my way of thinking, that would be Joe Biden.

We need to cull this field down immediately to the two men left standing: Biden and Bernie. Let pragmatism prevail over passion.

national news

Memo to Steyer: Congress isn’t ‘appointed’

As if yet another billionaire presidential candidate is more astute than the one who’s in office already.

I heard a TV ad today from Tom Steyer, one of two billionaires seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Steyer, who burst onto the national scene by financing an impeach Donald Trump effort nationally, needs a basic civics lesson if he’s going to make a pitch for good government.

Steyer’s advertisement, which makes the pitch for mandated term limits, referred — in Steyer’s own voice — to Congress being “appointed to what amounts to a lifetime job.”

C’mon, Tom! Get with the program, dude!

Congress isn’t appointed to anything. House of Representatives members run for election and/or re-election every two years. Senators serve for six-year elected terms.

Therefore, we already have a form of term limits on the books. The U.S. Constitution has taken care of that matter by requiring elections for the entire House every other year, along with one-third of the Senate. Voters have plenty of opportunities, I submit, to limit the terms of members with their ballots.

Whether they choose to keep their House member or their senator in office until hell freezes over is their call exclusively. If their elected official is doing a good job, then they get to keep doing a good job. If not, well, voters can boot ’em out.

Term limits? We have them already!

national news

Steyer bowed out of 2020 race, now he’s in

Blogger’s Note: This item is being reposted after its original version was knocked out by a technological glitch. 

You must be kidding me. This isn’t funny. Not in the least.

Tom Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire who has made it is his life’s mission to impeach Donald J. Trump now wants to run for president of the United States.

And this announcement comes after Steyer said earlier this year that he had no interest in running for president, that he would be fixated only on removing the current president, Trump, from office.

This can’t be happening. Can it? I’m afraid it is.

Of all the candidacies for POTUS that have declared for the upcoming election cycle, this one makes the least sense of all of them. That is to say it makes no sense at all. None, man! Zero!

Steyer has no policy chops I can identify. He’s simply flush with lots of money that he intends to spend on trying to get Trump tossed out of office on his ear. On that point, I am actually on his side.

That is as far as it goes.

The most astonishing counter-intuitive aspect of this guy’s candidacy is the juxtaposition of his effort to impeach Trump and his effort to succeed him as president of the United States if lightning were to strike and the Senate would convict him of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Someone needs to explain how that plays out.

national news

Another billionaire running for POTUS? Really?

You must be kidding me. This isn’t funny. Not in the least.

Tom Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire who has made it is his life’s mission to impeach Donald J. Trump now wants to run for president of the United States.

And this announcement comes after Steyer said earlier this year that he had no interest in running for president, that he would be fixated only on removing the current president, Trump, from office.

This can’t be happening. Can it? I’m afraid it is.

Of all the candidacies for POTUS that have been declared for the upcoming election cycle, this one makes the least sense of all of them. That is to say it makes no sense at all. None, man! Zero!

Steyer has no policy chops I can identify. He’s simply flush with lots of money that he intends to spend on trying to get Trump tossed out of office on his ear. On that point, I am actually on his side.

That is as far as it goes.

The most astonishing counter-intuitive aspect of this guy’s candidacy is the juxtaposition of his effort to impeach Trump and his effort to succeed him as president of the United States if lightning were to strike and the Senate would convict him of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Someone needs to explain how that plays out.

national news

Waiting for Democratic field to actually thin itself out

What’s going on here?

U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell bowed out today from the Democratic Party presidential primary campaign in 2020. He was one of about a dozen or so zero-percenters who have no chance of being nominated.

But then what do we hear? It is that Tom Steyer, a gazillionaire whose sole purpose in being in public life is to impeach Donald Trump, now wants to enter the Democratic primary field.

To which I say: Huh? What? Are you kidding me?

How does this work, Tom? How does a presidential candidate run for office seeking to impeach and remove the guy who’s in the office now? I believe we have a case of extreme counter-intuitiveness. 

Steyer would bring nothing, zero to this campaign other than a burning desire to see Trump impeached and then kicked out of office. Foreign policy chops? Economic policy expertise? Environmental policy? Human rights? Immigration policy? Geopolitical relationships? Crickets, man!

The Democratic Party field remains far too full of folks just like Swalwell, who at least had the good sense to realize that he didn’t get any traction after that first Democratic primary joint appearance. He tossed one line out there that seem to stick to the wall: He told frontrunner Joe Biden it was time to “pass the torch” to a generation of younger leaders.

That was it.

Now he’s on the sidelines, presumably heading back to his actual job of representing his California congressional district.

For my money, the Democratic field needs to see a lot more of these pretenders head for the showers.

As for Tom Steyer, well, he might be the most unqualified Democrat yet to join this contest, if he actually follows through.

Maybe he can explain to us just how he would campaign for Donald Trump’s impeachment/conviction while seeking the very office the president now occupies. I’m all ears, Tom.

political news

This guy for POTUS? No-o-o-o-o!

Tom Steyer is precisely the kind of individual I do not want to run for president of the United States of America in 2020.

He’s a billionaire gadfly/philanthropist/impeachment activist.

Steyer has been on a two-year-long campaign to round up enough interest to impeach Donald John Trump Sr. The way I see this guy, that is his sole claim to fame. It’s his sole vehicle for notoriety.

It is no reason at all to consider this guy for president, the leader of the free world, the commander in chief, the head of state and government of the world’s most indispensable nation.

Indeed, Donald Trump himself has demonstrated since the day he was elected that his own lack of government experience renders him — along with his myriad personal failings — totally unfit for the office he occupies.

Steyer now wants us to believe he is the answer to what ails us?

C’mon, man! Get real!

The dude has a website. He is planning some town hall meetings. He appears to be setting up one of those “exploratory committees” to determine the level of support he has among Democrats.

The guy is mega-rich. He’s a loudmouth gadfly who thinks he can parlay his wealth and his big mouth into enough votes to defeat Trump in a 2020 presidential confrontation.

I don’t mind that he’s raising a ruckus about Trump’s many failings as president. I do mind that he considers himself a serious contender for the presidency.

I want to hold out hope that Americans will realize they’ve been snookered one too many times already into falling for the flim-flammery offered by Donald Trump.

Let’s not traipse down that road again.