Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
The problems we have in the country are solvable, but not solvable the way we’re approaching them today, because of partisan politics. Richard Helppie, a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist seeks to find a place in the middle where common sense discussions can bridge the current great divide.
Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
Episode 9- Breaking Down a Bloomberg Entry
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Rich takes a few minutes to ponder what Micheal Bloomberg's entry into the 2020 Presidential race might mean.
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Speaker 2Welcome to the podcast, the common bridge with Richard helpy . Rich is a successful entrepreneur in the technology, health and finance space. He and his wife Leslie are also philanthropists with interest in civic and artistic endeavors, but with a primary focus on medically and educationally underserved children. My name is Brian Kruger , and from time to time I'll be the moderator and host of this podcast. Welcome back. I hope you had a good Thanksgiving , uh, weekend , um, watched a lot of football and all of that and great to have you back. Uh , rich last week we talked a little bit about impeachment , um, a lot about impeachment actually, but I didn't get a chance to ask you about Michael Bloomberg entering the race , uh, on the democratic side. Uh, there's a lot of implications with this. You and I are kind of both fans of him, I think. Um, do you have any thoughts about Bloomberg entering and entering this late and how possible or what , what kind of chance he might have at this point?
Speaker 3Well, Michael Bloomberg is a quality human being , um , a very distinguished business career, quite an innovator. Um, it's got a great news media business today. Uh, of course served as the mayor of New York. Um, and , and it's an interesting , um , uh , entry. Um, what I , what I think about is that it's almost astonishing how the Democrats have gone from one pole to the other pole. And what I mean by this is that in 2016, they basically pre pick the candidate and then blocked any challengers to kind of out there with one candidate and from pole to pole wire to wire, they were going to run Hillary Clinton. And so basically no one's in except Hillary. Then it's like, okay, that was a mistake. And I think they've over-corrected a little bit. There's a lot of people on those stages. So 2020 is an overcorrection and now everyone is in. And I think that there might be some lessons from the Republicans of 2016 that are being missed. Um, and that is, if you look at the voting patterns throughout the primaries , um, they're the people that the Republicans thought would rise to the top. Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and John Casey and Casey did hang in there longer. Uh , Chris Christie , um, we're actually all out pretty early and it came down to , uh, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Um, Ted Cruz actually won the Iowa caucuses. Uh , Trump won in New Hampshire with only 35% of the vote, and he, and he picked up 12 of the 23 delegates , um , early primary and Carolina. Trump only took 32 and a half percent of the vote, but he got off 50 delegates because of those rules. Nevada, another one, he did a little better out there, just under 46% of the vote, picking up 14 of the 30 of delegates. But then you look at places like Idaho , uh, Florida , um , Missouri, Arizona, and these are all States that Trump took anywhere from 28 to 46% of the vote. And some of those higher vote totals were later on in the primaries when so many had dropped out. Um, but he claimed , uh , as many as 99 delegates in Florida. So he kept building up this , uh , huge lead because the , uh, the field was so , uh, dispersed. Nobody was gaining traction and it kind of looks the way the Democrats , um, uh, are positioning today. And if you go back to two 16 by may it was Cruz and Casick and basically a mop up operation. Yeah . And Trump then started sweeping. He took 53% of the vote in Indiana and all 57 delegates and then other States where he took, whereas a winner take all Washington, California, Montana, New Jersey and New Mexico. And so another candidate into the democratic field, you have to wonder if Michael Bloomberg starts getting a base. It's got to come from someplace in somebody body . And that's I think an unknown.
Speaker 2If you were a guessing man though, where do you think it would come from? Uh , he , he's, there's a couple of things that's a dichotomy for the party in this. There's a billionaire that's going to finance his own. They've already got one of those guys in the race now. Um, but it kind of goes against a little bit of the redistribution of wealth. And it's sort of the antichrist for the liberal side
Speaker 3to be fair or to when , when Michael Bloomberg endorsed Barack Obama , um , he said that he thought that his policies were, speaking of Obama, were , were too much about wealth distribution versus wealth creation. Um, but given the push from the left wing of the democratic party, we'll see , uh , Bloomberg's entry does move them toward the middle at all. Um, and I know that , um, eventually we're going to record a sarcasm Saturday. I know they're coming . All right , so that's a warning for everybody out there. What might you hear on sarcasm Saturday?
Speaker 2Well, I said, okay. Passing my seat , the,
Speaker 3and you can look this up , uh, that the Democrats have a great investment in identity politics and I went and found enough sources on that. So I'm confident that, that you can make that claim. So, okay . What's, what's Michael Bloomberg going to bring to the , uh, to the field? So first of in identity politics. He's old. Okay . So he's in a field now with Bernie and Joe who are both old as well. Yeah , he's been a mayor and he's going to be joining , um, Cory Booker and peep a Buddha gig. Um, he's anti-gun. So somebody had to replace Beto, but there are others in there that are anti-gun. Um, he's Jewish, so he joins Bernie Sanders. Um, he's a billionaire, so he joins , uh , Tom Stier and he provides a new target for Elizabeth Warren. And by the way, interestingly enough, when I was looking into this, Andrew Yang is only worth like a million dollars according to Forbes. That, I mean, not even a multimillionaire that I was astonished. I like Andrew Yang. Okay. I don't think he's got a lot of good ideas and I love his tagline. Okay. He , he, he's a Donald Trump's worst threat because an Asian that can do math, but , um , he's not a billionaire. Um, but , uh, some things that , um, uh, Bloomberg , uh, brings, he's also, he's a new Yorker now. Okay. And with bill DeBlasio out there's room and just think about that . If he wins the nomination , uh , Manhattan is going to be Epic as a fun place. Those two guys going at it won't be able to move. It should be fun. And then of course, there's the question of whether he was his ancestors were a slave owner or not, which he's going to contend with Joe Biden bragging about Delaware being a slave state. And , uh , Camilla Harris, his father advising her that her ancestors were slave owners. So , uh, when you go down the list of identity politics , uh , Michael's not changing the field at all. Uh, but again, he is a , uh , uh, obviously an interesting guy who can fund a lot of his own campaign. Uh , you know, you don't have to worry about him being beholden to anybody and let's see what he has to say on the campaign trail. I'm just gonna ask you personally just a vibe question. What do you think that wouldn't be a bad candidate though? It's the issue for me is where is he coming from today? Can he re gain his centrist bona Fides? Uh , because remember he did become an independent and can he actually govern , um , in the middle and get us out of this polarization? That's what my ears will be on for. Um , if he's one more guy to play the polarization game, you know, anti-Trump thing , start singing that tune, you know, okay , blah blah, blah, alright with the country's get numb about that. So come on in. You got a great resume. Um, you know, known as a person of integrity. Just let's hear how you'd approach the presidency of the United States. But if he approaches it in any way that he did with , um, being a mayor of New York, he put a lot of that stuff aside and just, I thought he was a good mayor maybe. I mean, I thought anyway. Um, he just moved forward and got things done. I don't see him being partisan. Well , let's see if in today's climate he's the guy that can break through , uh, do you think he'd care about, I mean, he's older. He's accomplished it . It seems to me he wouldn't handle it. Like he would handle Manhattan and I'm going to be watching intently. Yeah . And see what he does. He's evolved over the years and let's see what he has to say and let's see if he can get through primary season. Um, because of the contours of the Democrat party today and whether or not he can bring enough , uh, votes together to get that nomination. Yeah. With him going in, who do you think , uh, pays the price out of the dozen people we had on stage? Who pays a price when he comes in? Who, who immediately has to just fall off the wayside. That's, I think that remains to be seen. Um , I think some of the , uh , early candidates , uh, John Hickenlooper in particular, it was a shame to lose him real sham and , uh , but I, I hear , uh , Senator Bennett , um, a lot of what he says makes sense. He knows how to run a government. Um, he's got a track record that we can all see. Um, I think he'd run really well. Uh, but I also see him starting to cave into that pressure. Um, I heard a radio interview interview with him yesterday. He just one more polarizing guy and maybe that's just a touch point . He has to do to get through the primary. So , yeah . Um , back in episode two, you and I were talking, you said some of that was fascinating and I don't think you met this in a derogatory way at all, but you said that the , the, the, the Democrats need to fall in love with their candidate , um, more than the Republicans. Do they have to really care and embrace the guy or woman and, and move forward. Does that happen with , uh , Bloomberg? Is he a lovable guy for the, for the Democrats, you know? Yeah , that's a great question. And , uh , you know, I , I just hesitate to speculate on what could happen , um, that he again, is , uh , an interesting candidate , um, at this time of his life. Why does he want to do that? Uh, you know, why does he want to seek this office and why is he going to be different? And you know, we'll have to see, right . Again, always appreciate your time and folks, if you want to go out there and look@richardhelpy.com learn a little bit more about , um, what we're trying to do here with the common bridge. Uh, and we really think that there's been a lot of you that have signed up to , um, to the website and we'll start getting some newsletter stuff out to you after the new year. And I'm , I really appreciate everybody climbing on board . This has been way more successful earlier than we thought, so we're excited and thanks for joining us and we'll see you next week. You have been listening to Richard healthy's common bridge podcast recording and post-production provided by stunt three multimedia. All rights are reserved by Richard helpy . For more information, visit Richard helpy.com .