ral process.

All right, so that's just an interesting thing to think about. I've been saying this for a while. Candace Owens says it better. But I think that Republicans are natural allies with the African American community. They're the most naturally compatible group. Now yeah, yeah, I get it. There is some percentage of Republicans who are irredeemable racists. I'm sure some percentage of Democrats are also irredeemable racists. We're not talking about that. You know, we're not talking about them. But just your general Republican is a natural ally to the Black community. You can see this in the results that the president's got: everything from prison reform to special economic zones to increased funding for historically Black colleges and, you know, low unemployment rate that he crows about all the time.

But here's the thing. Don't you think that open borders could be considered the opposite of reparations? Because if you are a Black citizen in this country, well how do you feel about opening the border and letting people in who of course never suffered from slavery in this country, never benefited from it? They're just sort of another group. But they are having a big impact on your tax base, your economic situation. How can you have open borders and also be in favor of reparations? Because what open borders feels like the opposite. Somebody says, "A stretch." Is it a stretch if Republicans are trying to keep the border tight and explicitly for the benefit of Americans and explicitly for the benefit of Americans at the lower end of the economic spectrum? I don't know. It just looks like Republicans are the natural allies.

And the other thing that Republicans have that the Black community shares is they're pretty religious. So Republicans are pretty religious. The Black community is very religious. And Republicans have a path to success: Follow these laws, get a job, obey the Constitution. Boom, you're good with us. Us being Republicans. I'm not a Republican but playing the part of a Republican for this point.

All right, so I think that's the biggest story as the Black vote and will continue to be through 2020.

Let's talk about the debate. How everybody did. In my opinion, Mike Bloomberg won the debate and he won it hard. Now I don't — you know, I tried to ignore all the other pundits before I formed my own opinion because it's easy to be influenced. If you hear three people in a row say, you know, X person won, you start thinking all the experts think X person won. So I intentionally avoided other people's commentary. Now other people are not saying Bloomberg won. They are saying he did better. All right, so here's my argument for why Bloomberg won. Part of it is that the others lost. Bloomberg did a little bit better and everybody else didn't. So direction matters. You know, as soon as the public or the pundits sniff any kind of directional change that makes more difference than where you're at because people are looking at the direction.

So let me go through the other candidates' performance and then I'll talk about why Bloomberg won. First of all, you can't underestimate how diabolical President Trump's nicknames really are. When he named Joe Biden Sleepy Joe, as soon as he named him Sleepy Joe — I'm sure I said this in public more than once — I said he's going to cause Biden to have to overcompensate and to look less sleepy. And that takes you out of your comfort zone because most people are trying to operate within their personality, to operate the way they always have and they're comfortable. You know, this is who I am. This is what I do. As soon as the president says that, that little comfort zone you were in — Joe Biden makes you look sleepy. What does that cause Joe Biden to need to do? He needs to act not sleepy.

Now how is he doing it? Apparently he is substituting good arguments with angry furrowed brows. Have you noticed that the less that Joe Biden says, the more angrily he says it? So have you noticed that when Joe Biden doesn't have a good point he just says it more angrily? So I wonder, like, you know, Joe Biden ordering coffee in Starbucks. You could see him in there. "Oh Mr. Biden, you know, what can I get for you today?" And Joe Biden would be like, "I want a grande grande latte. Leave room for milk." From Luke. And then he would order his coffee and you'd say, "Joe Biden, I don't know why you're so angry and why are your eyebrows doing that? Like do you need a shot of Botox there? That looks really painful. Do you have a headache afterwards for that eyebrow thing you're doing? I'm so angry."

Now to me it seems obvious that he's lost a step, several steps, and that he's compensating for being sleepy by being extra angry. So he is not acting sleepy, right? If he did act sleepy he'd be playing into Trump's trap. So he's left his comfort zone to act really crazy and angry and it just — people know there's something wrong. I mean when you watch Biden last night, did it look like he was a forceful in-command alpha leader, which I think is what he was going for, or did he look a little deranged in a way that older people sometimes can be? Be honest. He looked — he just didn't look right. I mean if you're being honest.

Now what did the president tweet about that? The funniest president in the world. I wrote it down because you have to get the exact wording. So one of the secrets of humor is simplification and this is one of the secrets that Trump gets right. Now of course people who are not so much in the know long ago, people stopped doing this, but he would be teased for keeping things so simple. But that's also the secret to his humor. Simplicity and humor are almost the same thing. There's just a little bit of difference. And once you understand that then it allows you that formula to be funny. So look at his simplicity and this and also he likes to make things visual. So see how visual this is and how simple it is and that's why it's so funny.

So he tweets this: "Crazy chaotic Democratic debate last night. Fake news said Biden did well even though he said half of our population was shot to death." Which he actually said. So Biden incorrectly said that 150 million people had been killed by handguns. That's about half of the population of the United States. So the president says fake news said Biden did well even though he said half of our population was shot to death. Come on, that's funny.

And then the president continues in his tweet: "Would be over for most. Mini Mike was weak and unsteady but helped greatly by his many commercials which are not supposed to be allowed." Now that's true. The commercials that ran during the presidential debate were Mike Bloomberg commercials. And you know I was watching on DVR and I would get to the commercial and I started to skip it and I thought, I might replay this. How is that fair? How in the world does Mike Bloomberg get to run Mike Bloomberg commercials during the debate? How in the world is that legal? And if it's legal, why is he the only one doing it? Does nobody else have any money? Because if I were going to run an ad on TV, can you think of a better time to do it? What would be the best time to run an ad? You know, so when I say that Mike Bloomberg won the debate, if you were watching the debate and you saw that only one candidate ran a commercial in the debate and it seemed to him it looks like he ran all of them, what would you say to yourself? I would say there seems to be only one smart, well-funded person on that stage because they all should have done that if that's something you can do. And apparently it is. So why was Bloomberg the only one? It made the others look like idiots honestly or underfunded, which would look like a loser as well. So that's just one of the reasons that Bloomberg won, is that he was the only one doing the obvious smarter thing: run an ad during the debate.

Let's talk more about Biden. So Ronny Jackson, the ex-doctor to the president, ex-doctor to President Trump, said that Biden might need that cognitive test that he gave the president and the president scored well. And I like that Ronny Jackson is going full political. I don't know if he's ever done that before except for supporting the president that you work for. But that's pretty damning when a guy who was the doctor for a president says I think this candidate needs to take that cognitive test. Okay, it's not just you and I. You know, we're not the only ones seeing something. There's something wrong there.

All right, so I think Biden is done. It's a matter of time. So that's one reason that Bloomberg won, right? So Bloomberg wins when the people competing against him are not doing better or especially if they're doing worse.

Let's talk about the others. I thought Elizabeth Warren was boring, lawyerly, unpleasant, and a liar. That's how she came across to me. Did anybody else see it differently? Now you're probably thinking, oh Scott, you like President Trump so you're just saying that Democrats are liars. But wait for it. What did Bloomberg lie about yesterday? What did Bloomberg lie about during the debate? Or even if you like, what did Bloomberg lie about recently? Doesn't even have to be last night. You know what the answer is? Nothing. Nothing, right? Can you think of anything? I can't think of anything that Bloomberg lied about. Can you? And he's competing against somebody who stood right next to him and lied and he called her out for being inaccurate and stuff. But I think yeah, I think she seemed — she didn't have the charisma. She didn't come across as likable. And I'm very careful about using that word because I know there's a gender element to that. You know, you don't want to be the one who says that a woman was unlikable in a group of men competing for the top office. But I'm going to soften that this way. Bernie is pretty unlikable to me, right? So I'm not saying this just about Elizabeth Warren. I find Bernie — there's stuff I like about him, definitely some character elements I like about Bernie. But I don't like listening to him. He comes across as an angry old man, get off my lawn. So I would equate them as fairly similarly unlikable. So that I can take the gender part off of that.

All right, who else? I think that Pete Buttigieg had a really bad night because he kept trying to take an alpha kind of control over the debate because it was kind of a free-for-all. And you saw that Biden didn't do a good job except complaining because he wasn't getting much time, which was not really very leaderly. It was more like an old man complaining because somebody stole his mail. But Buttigieg kept trying to talk over his competitors and failing. So he was sort of under-talked. You know, somebody else would sort of be commanding your attention but you'd hear little Pete Buttigieg's voice maybe a minute in. And here's the reason that Buttigieg is done. The moment you realize that Pete Buttigieg is just the poor man's Mike Bloomberg, there's no reason for him, right? If you wanted a mayor to be your president, somebody with experience as a mayor, do you want the mayor of the middle-sized town or city or would you want a mayor who ran New York City that's bigger than most or a lot of countries? No competition, right? If you wanted somebody who only had experience as a mayor, you're not going to pick the guy from the little city. You're going to pick Bloomberg. Which of them will be better funded? Well obviously Bloomberg. Which of them has more experience? Obviously Bloomberg. Which of them has been successful with working across the aisle? Obviously Bloomberg. So the problem that Pete has is that his natural comparison just changed. Before Bloomberg was actually on the stage, Pete was sort of his own little thing, right? You didn't think anybody was like him. He was just all by himself. It's like he had his own little channel there for a while. But the moment you had Bloomberg you got two mayors and one of them's a lot more capable and successful and has a record and ran a bigger thing. It's not even close. So I think Pete disappeared. He looked like sort of a beta personality on that stage. Could be him. I'm going to use beta compared to Elizabeth Warren even. So it's not a gender thing as well. You know, he looked less strong than Elizabeth Warren did by comparison. So I think he's going to fade.

Then let's talk about Bernie. Bernie has two fatal wounds, two mortal wounds. So Bernie basically is a dead man walking. He might make it to the nomination. He might limp to the nomination. But he has two fatal flaws. One is that I think the Democrats did a really good job of making the case — and several of them did — that a Bernie candidacy would cost them the House or could be a fatal mistake that would allow another four years of Trump appointing judges and it would turn over the House and it could be a catastrophe. That is a really good point coming from Democrats. That same point, if it came from a Republican, wouldn't have the same kind of firepower. You just say it's just what Republicans say. But when you see a group of Democrats saying the same thing about one of their own, one of our own, you realize that your plan is going to ruin everything. I mean it's the riskiest thing we can ever do. That's the fatal flaw. There's nothing Bernie can do to fix that. So but he might have enough already momentum to limp to the nomination.

The other thing that's a fatal flaw is when he was challenged about his programs and how he would pay for them, each time he's challenged by, let's say by Democrats again, it's far more impactful. When he's challenged by his own team, if a Republican challenged him you just say hey your numbers are stupid too. You know, it's just political. But when his own team challenges some of his numbers not adding up, that's really powerful. And I keep waiting for Bernie to improve how he's explaining himself and he's not. He doesn't seem to have the capability to explain economic stuff in a persuasive, believable way. So he starts waving his arms and getting angry and throwing out numbers. And when he does that, waving his arms and throwing out numbers that don't really seem to answer the question of how could we afford all this, he's just throwing data at you. He feels like more of a con man. So I'm slowly feeling his brand being shifted by his opponents from this ethical guy who's got a movement to something more like a con man who knows his numbers don't add up. Because he now acts like someone who knows it's not real, right? Because he does such a bad job of defending the math of it that it doesn't look like he even believes it. So I think those are his two fatal flaws.

Who else was there? Klobuchar. You know, I saw some people saying she did a good job. I would also say that if you were going to grade her on hitting all her notes, saying the right things, having sensible sounding policies, sounding serious, sounding like she had a good track record, I would say if you were doing the checklist of a debate it looked really good. Check, check, check, check, check for Klobuchar. But here's the thing. I thought she disappeared on the stage. That was just my impression. In other words, when you put her up there with those other people there's something about her persona that just sort of shrinks. It could be height. Could be a gender thing but I don't think so because Elizabeth Warren did not shrink. So clearly there's — and I think if you would put Hillary Clinton on the stage I don't think she would have shrunk. But there was something about the debate that I couldn't get too interested in what she was saying even though it all made sense. Yeah, there's something, a lack of charisma here that obviously hasn't hurt her as a senator. She's been very successful. But I'm not sure the public can be happy with someone who is just good at their job. Klobuchar comes across as a comfortable pair of shoes. Meaning I don't have anything to complain about from Klobuchar. Yeah, if you were to say to me, Scott, name her biggest negative, I'd say oh well that's weird. I can't think of one. She doesn't really have one. She's actually a really, really strong candidate. But I don't know that her charisma is selling to her own side. There's something a little bland about her. Don't know what it is. So I don't think she's a threat to make a move in the pack.

Who was the other notable person? Was it Steyer? I can't get too serious about Steyer because I don't think his own side is serious about it. If Steyer did unusually well on Super Tuesday or something I guess I would reassess. But I don't think he did anything to move up to the top three.

All right, so given that the other people looked worse, that either looked fatal or they disappeared, here's what I felt about Bloomberg. You saw him try to make some jokes that completely didn't work, right? Did you see that? So Bloomberg tried to be funny. He tried to be self-deprecating. He made a joke about a naked cowboy in New York that nobody understood unless they're from New York. In other words that's a New York reference, totally out of place. He joked that he did so well in the last debate. So he was being self-deprecating but it didn't really come across because he didn't deliver it well.

Here was my net impression. I kind of liked him more. I don't know if you had that impression but he looked like a nerd who meant well. That is very effective. He's just not good at that stuff and I don't have a problem with that. I don't have any problem with somebody who knows they're a nerd. They know they're not good at that stuff. Yeah, he took a shot at it. Was he embarrassed? Apparently not. I like a guy who'll go out there and fail in public and just say yeah, laugh it off, try it again. So I have to say that Bloomberg looked a little more human.

And this is one of the main things I was looking for, is to see if his age was as much of a negative as you'd expect. He didn't look his age. If you were to compare Bloomberg's mental agility to Joe Biden's it's not even close, right? Bloomberg didn't look like there's anything missing. Now I still think he's too old. I don't think we should be electing leaders above a certain age like he's at. But it doesn't show, so that works to his advantage.

And the other thing that was very strong is he listed off some accomplishments that I wasn't aware of. This sounded pretty solid. He talked about how the school system in New York improved tremendously. He talked about how life expectancy in New York improved while he was mayor and that's pretty good. He talked about — and here's the best part — he made a little bit of news by misspeaking during the debate and he talked about how he helped to fund the campaigns of half of the people who were part of the 40 new people who came into Congress and flipped the House so that Nancy Pelosi could be in charge and, as he put it, put a control on the president. So Bloomberg was taking credit for flipping the House and already putting control on Trump. But he misspoke and he started to say that he bought it.

Now here's the thing. Of course the gotcha part of the press: "You said bought it. Are you trying to buy our democracy?" But here's the thing. He told you. He's not hiding it. He bragged about it. He said I just bought you the House and I can buy the Senate basically. He didn't say that but the idea is he can buy you what you want. Do you know how powerful that is? Bloomberg just said not only can I buy you what you want with me as president, I proved it. I bought you what you want in the House. It worked. And now I'm buying you what you want for the presidency, which is a victory over Trump. I thought that was the strongest part of his debate because it was something I didn't know that completely changed how I saw it. Because there's something very not evil about the transparency he's bringing to the process. He's telling you exactly what he's doing and then he does it in front of you. He does it legally and he's not making any excuses for it. He's saying I bought the House. I'm going to try to buy the election for you.

Now here's the thing. Remember I said he didn't lie about anything that I can think of. So you automatically give him a little more credibility because he's not lying about stuff. But he's got some negatives. Let's talk about them. And I'm going to talk about how he hasn't quite done a good job talking about his NDAs and talking about stop-and-frisk. I'm going to tell you how he could do it better. I'm going to give us some suggestions.

So let's talk about stop-and-frisk first. Here's how. Let's say you're the mayor. So let's say you're Bloomberg and you inherited this program but you ran it way too long. He did shut it down by 95 percent but he admits he ran it too long. So he hasn't done a good job of explaining himself yet but he could. And so let me give you an example of how I would do it. The biggest thing that people care about is your intentions and he doesn't speak to that directly and he should. Because remember the intention of stop-and-frisk was a good one and I don't think anybody even disagrees with that. So here's how I would say it and it'd be words to this effect.

So let's say I'm Mike Bloomberg and somebody says, hey you, you ran that stop-and-frisk thing and that was very racist. What do you say? I would say this: The intention of stop-and-frisk was to take sides with the women and the children and the elderly in high-crime neighborhoods. If you think about it, stop-and-frisk was far more sexist and ageist than it was racist. And if you don't see what I just did there I'll come back and explain it. And I would say that most crime victims are minorities and it was a program that started before I was mayor and it started with good intentions. It started to help the minority community where crime was rampant. And I would say if you think it was racist, if you think it was racist I think you're being too kind to it. It was way more than racist. It was sexist because we weren't stopping women and it was ageist. We weren't stopping elderly. We weren't stopping toddlers. It was sexist. It was ageist. But we, the police and the mayor, we don't have a choice of where the crime is. It's not up to us who commits crimes and it's not up to us where they commit them. It's our job as the police force, as the mayor, to put law enforcement where there's the most crime. That's what we did. And we absolutely targeted young men in those areas where there were high crime. Now was that right? Well it was an experiment and I would say it was an experiment that did not work. The blind spot we had is how it would feel to the community. It feels racist and that was a far bigger cost than anybody hoped. There was nobody who was behind stop-and-frisk who had the intention to make things worse for the community. But there was a blind spot that it came across as racist. And in retrospect I think we would all agree it had more impact on one group than another. That's racist by definition. But the intention was positive. It was absolutely sexist because we were targeting men. It was absolutely ageist because we were targeting young men. And we're targeting young men who were not dressed for church if you know what I mean. Now we wouldn't do it again. We learned from it.

Now here's the next part of my persuasion. As mayor I inherited this program and I accept responsibility for not shutting it down sooner. And I would like to promise all of my critics they should — any of my critics ever do anything right in the future I'll be the first one to tell them they should have done it sooner. Because you can't do something that's right soon enough. And so to my critics who say I didn't shut it down soon enough, you're right. You can never be soon enough for something that's the right thing to do. I've apologized for it. I just want you to know the intentions were right. I hope we all learned something from it. It's not something we do again. And the impact was unforgivable.

Is that better? How would you feel about that? Because the key here is that the intentions were good and that you were intending to discriminate but it was against men who were young. Do you know how many people are willing to discriminate against young men? A lot. Doesn't matter what your ethnicity is. Young men do commit a lot of crimes. It's true. I was a young man. I know.

All right, so then the other thing he gets — he hasn't done a good job of is defending his non-disclosure agreements. And apparently he said some offensive things that made people uncomfortable. We don't know the details and he even says he doesn't remember the details and I actually think that might be true. I think he actually doesn't remember what he might have said that would have caused the problem long ago.

Here's how I would have responded to that. Uh-huh, Mayor Bloomberg, you have some NDAs and they were offensive. Now the first thing he did is that he agreed to release the people from their NDAs, which was a total baller move. I gotta say that was a strong play. He just released them and just said if they want to talk to you it's okay with me. They're released. Now I don't know if anybody will because NDAs are to the benefit of both parties, right? The people may not think it's worth it. But I love the fact that he just released them. He didn't even argue about it, right? There was no point in which he pushed back. He looked into it. You released them? Yeah I'd love to know what they say.

But here's how I would respond to that. Mayor Bloomberg, you know what about those bad things you said about women? So I'd say some version of this: I don't recall what I said to offend but let me confess to having an unfiltered sense of humor that can come off as offensive. So the first thing you need to do, just totally own it. I think he does. I think he is totally owning it. But when he said, you know, he could have owned it a little better than to say well your joke was taken wrong. If you say a joke was taken wrong you're putting responsibility on the victim. So I think he did that wrong. He should have been a little more generous about taking it all. And I'll say my sentence again: I don't recall what I said to offend. So he said maybe he was offensive. But let me confess to having an unfiltered sense of humor that can come off as offensive. Now why that's persuasive is that most people believe that they themselves have unfiltered sense of humors. It's very common. So everybody who thinks that of themselves just heard him say that he was like them. Oh yeah, unfiltered sense of humor. Oh yeah I've done that. I've had an unfiltered sense of humor. A little guilty of that. So I get it. And then he admits that it can come off as being offensive.

Here's the second part: I never intend to offend. Intentions are really important. It's something, it's a theme I come back to. People are judging people by their actions and we infer their intentions. Oh he's racist, he's whatever. So you should say directly what your intentions were because that's what people are looking for. And for some reason politicians don't speak that way. They should say my intention is this. If it doesn't work out you know that will change something but the intention is to do this. So I'd say never intended to offend and I apologize unreservedly for any discomfort I caused. So any kind of apology like that is good.

And then here's what I would add. I would say I think society as a whole has gotten smarter about that stuff. And everybody would agree it's like oh yeah society has evolved. And then I would say and I welcome you to judge me by my current behavior. Do you see what I did there? I just basically said we've all evolved so we're all better than we used to be. Judge me by my current behavior. I'm not really the same person that I was 20 years ago. But because guess what? Neither are you. You know none of us are the same people we were 20 years ago. We've all gotten smarter. Judge me by who I am today.

Now imagine if he had said that instead of well some people may have taken my joke wrong, which really did put the blame on the victim if you will.

All right, so I think Bloomberg probably could do a whole lot better fixing the holes he has. I think he's owned it all which is important and he has shown a track record of success. This seems relevant to the presidency. He's already shown that he can buy the presidency.

Now here's the other hidden magic of what Bloomberg is doing. Do you think that if Bernie is the candidate Bloomberg will spend his hundreds of millions to get Democrats elected in Congress? Would he? Because remember Bloomberg thinks that Bernie's policies would be a disaster. So if Bloomberg — if you can imagine a scenario where Bernie gets the nomination Bloomberg might turn off the spigot, right? If I understand Bloomberg's position he thinks that Bernie would be a disaster. So I don't think he's going to vote for more Democrats or help us fund more Democrats to have a stronger position in Congress if that would make Bernie capable of getting what he says he wants.

So the biggest problem that the Democrats have is if they nominate a centrist, even if it's not Bloomberg, they probably still get Bloomberg's money. You know what I mean? But if they nominate I would say either Bernie or maybe Warren I think Bloomberg would turn it off because he doesn't want those policies to become national policy.

So if you take all of the things I've said together, which is Bloomberg did nothing to hurt himself, did a really good job of saying his accomplishments, took full ownership of the things he's criticized for, and I think he did that magnificently in handling those flaws but they're not deadly because he's accepted them fully which really takes the power out of them. And when you add in the power of his money that would not accrue to the Sanders candidacy and you throw in the fact that he doesn't act his age and you throw in the fact that he's got — he had a little more personality but wouldn't you say even on that stage even though he doesn't have the million-wattage personality of a Trump on that stage he had more charisma than most? Wouldn't you say? Let me ask you. I still think he'll be slaughtered by Trump, right? I don't think Trump has any realistic chance of losing unless something new happens between now and election that's unanticipated. Somebody says he's unlikable. I don't know about that. I do not find Bloomberg unlikable. He's not fun but he looks sincere. I don't think he's lied. He's got a track record and he's not acting his age and he's got a kajillion dollars. I think he's the guy to beat right now. So we'll see if the Democrats are clever enough to give him the nomination. I'm not predicting that they will. I'm just saying he's certainly the one who has the commanding advantage right now. It may be too late though.

All right, coronavirus. Yeah I don't know what to believe about this coronavirus. The only thing I'm sure of is that our data is bad. I do think there's a nonzero chance that we citizens will be asked to stay out of pub