Posted on 02/19/2020 10:10:55 AM PST by Kaslin
Bloomberg is rising in polls and just qualified for the debate stage in Nevada, but a question nags: who really wants Bloomberg to be president?
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s massive campaign spending—hundreds of millions of dollars and counting—appears to be paying off. One poll this week showed Bloomberg tied with Sen. Bernie Sanders in Virginia, each with 22 percent, and after garnering 19 percent in a national poll released Tuesday, Bloomberg has qualified for the Democratic presidential debate tonight in Las Vegas.
At first glance Bloomberg’s poll surge suggests the New York billionaire has a real shot at challenging Sanders, the current Democratic frontrunner, for the nomination. That in turn has prompted some pundits, including my colleague David Marcus, to speculate on whether Bloomberg should be taken seriously—not just as a contender for the Democratic nomination, but for the White House.
Don’t let these new polls lead you astray. Not only is Mike Bloomberg not going to be president, he almost certainly isn’t even going to be the Democratic nominee.
Why? For one thing, polls can only tell us so much (just ask Joe Biden). But the most straightforward reason is that much of politics is about charisma and likeability, and Bloomberg is excruciatingly bland and unlikeable. In that way he’s like an anti-Trump—a male version of Hillary Clinton, or a Joe Biden with all the baggage and none of the charm.
Consider one version of the pro-Bloomberg argument, that he’s a no-nonsense billionaire who can get things done. He’s even more successful than Trump!
This misapprehends Trump’s appeal. Trump didn’t just bring a billionaire businessman persona to the 2016 election, he brought charisma and an entire media brand. He was a household name, a TV celebrity and an entertainer in his own right, and had been for decades.
Trump could dismiss CNN and MSNBC because he personally had a bigger platform than those outlets. Millions of Americans didn’t just know him as a successful businessman but also as a showman and an entertainer who is good, if not great, with a crowd—funny and even weirdly charming at times.
Bloomberg has none of that. Until recently, most Americans likely knew him as the New York City mayor who tried to ban Big Gulps. Before long, they’ll know him as the billionaire who bought his way into the Democratic primary, or as the guy who couldn’t explain the information economy without insulting farmers and factory workers, or explain health care without arguing it’s a waste to give health care to old people. Or maybe as the boss who told a female employee to kill her baby.
Style and personality aside, Bloomberg’s candidacy has no coherent narrative, a fact attested to by his almost comically vapid campaign slogan, “Mike will get it done,” as meaningless and uninspiring as “Make America Great Again” is brilliant. Get what done, Mike? A soda ban?
The absence of a rationale for his campaign stems from the plain fact that in the current scheme of American politics, a socially liberal fiscal conservative like Bloomberg has no natural constituency. Think of it this way. Trump has more or less reshaped the GOP into a socially conservative, fiscally liberal party. (For all intents and purposes, fiscal conservatism has no home in American politics right now. You don’t pass a $1-trillion-and-a-half tax cut and then run up a $1-trillion-and-a-half deficit and still get to call yourself a fiscal conservative.)
On the other side, the increasingly socialist post-Obama Democratic Party is both socially and fiscally liberal. Sanders, for example, wants to spend he doesn’t even know how many trillions on universal health care and socialized college, along with whatever other spending a Green New Deal might call for. The other leading Democratic candidates are more or less on board with this, as they must be in a party now ruled by identity politics and the promise of free stuff.
Bloomberg doesn’t fit in either camp. His appeal is to the socially liberal, fiscally conservative voter—an increasingly rare species in American politics but one that nevertheless preferred Trump over Clinton in 2016. So far, Bloomberg hasn’t been on a single ballot or earned a single vote. His momentum, such as it is, consists mostly in social media ads and media hype.
Maybe, as my colleague Christopher Bedford has argued, Bloomberg isn’t really running for president, and his campaign is really just a super PAC masquerading as a campaign to buy him influence over the eventual nominee. At this point, that would make more sense than the idea of a candidate who repels almost every category of voter having a serious shot at the White House, let alone the Democratic nomination.
Or maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe the point of “Mike can get it done” is nothing more than a meaningless, astronomically expensive exercise in vanity.
We are reaching the stage the Weimar Republic did in the 30s.
In the end nobody really cared all that much for preserving it, so when that happens it boils down to who is the most passionate and ruthless that gains power, in that case it was the Nazis, although it could have very easily been the Communists, it was going to be one or the other.
And the supporters of Bernie, AOC and their ilk are the most passionate and ruthless of Democrats, and that’s why they are winning the day.
What a completely foolish thing to state so blatantly. Here’s reality, one of them is going to be the nominee, nobody knows which one yet.
You can't buy love but you can rent it.
Bloomberg is just pointing out who the Democrats hate most this week... I guess this week farmers threaten Democrats the most.
You don’t pass a $1-trillion-and-a-half tax cut and then run up a $1-trillion-and-a-half deficit and still get to call yourself a fiscal conservative.)
We know Bloomingdale is a turd but we don't need reassurance from a liar.
Bloomberg probably would like to buy a third party that he can hand pick.
That would be a historic First! The first tranny prex.
Bloomie may not be the Dem nominee, but his billions were certainly win a LOT of House seats.
He won 21 of 24 funded races in ‘18.
And Trump got impeached.
Bloomie is very dangerous.
I don’t believe in spreading this type of rhetoric; all may be true, and I hope and pray that nobody from the left is ever president. but, this is the type of talk centered around Trump 4 years ago. $hit happens...
If the Socialist Board of Control (DNC) believe that the nominee, whoever it might be, will sure lose i almost half expect them to give it to Mrs. Bill to get her out of their hair. That said i don’t think Mrs Bill can stand up to another campaign. She would only appear for brief periods during widely separated days with big dudes to her right and left to prop her up if the Levadopa fails to keep her upright and apparently rational.
They used to say something similar about Arabs, you can’t buy one, but you can rent one.
Maybe Bloomberg will give potential voters some “ walking around money.”
They both worked with the working people...Trump more so...
Reagan got to know them when he went to GE plants around the country..
Trump being in construction first then adding hotels and restraunts..
I worked construction and the best developers came to the job and talked to the workers to see how thing were going...and catered a free lunch..
Jeb Bush did not deploy billions to buy the DNC. The comparison is sketchy at best.
An excellent analysis, except for.....who will be the DNC’s candidate if Bernie gets derailed a second time, and Bloomberg doesn’t want to be the candidate?
That leaves Plugs & his dissipating brain cells, Lizzie Warren the lying faux Indian scold, Buttigieg the gay blade & his husband, Klobuchar the office tyrant, Gabbard the hottie whose looks conceal her radical views, and..................
Hillary?
Bloomberg has not reached even a half billion yet. The comparison between Jeb and Bloomberg is that money can’t buy you the nomination. Bloomberg will fail just like Jeb did.
If they think the squishy middle is the promised land, then they need a compromise candidate from the Dino Rino Never Trumper Cabal. I can’t think of anyone that fits this better then Pierre Defecto. I suspect after his impeachment vote and heat he is getting from the Utah GOP, that he switches parties. Then it all makes sense. Mittens thinks he is so righteous that he actually would believe he is sent by god for just this purpose. There is a reason why he split his own impeachment vote and was rewarded by the demonrats and fake media with all the fawning praise. He is being played and is too stupid, arrogant and egotistical to realize it. He is the perfect pawn in this swamp game.
So here they go with Bloomberg, a candidate that the Democrat voters don't like. They like Bernie.
The only difference between then and now is that Bernie can't win.
It is an experiment that has not
yet run its course.
Whether its Mini Mike or Breadline Bernie, Trump is going to romp in November.
“Breadline Bernie”
First time I’ve heard that. LOVE IT!
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