Posted on 02/21/2020 5:13:02 AM PST by Kaslin
Wednesday night in Las Vegas, Mayor Mike Bloomberg learned what it is like to be thrown up against a wall and frisked.
At the opening of the Democratic debate, his first, Mayor Mike was greeted by his nearest neighbor on stage, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with this warm welcome:
"We're running against ... a billionaire who calls women 'fat broads' and 'horse-faced lesbians.' And, no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mayor Bloomberg."
Bloomberg was not only charged with misogyny and sexism but racism for his stop-and-frisk policy, which the NYPD pursued during his three terms as mayor. By Bloomberg's own admission, stop and frisk singled out black men between 16 and 25.
Undiscussed were the positive results of the policy.
Gun homicides in New York fell to levels below those attained by his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani. And if those most often frisked were black and Hispanic men, the lives saved and the woundings prevented were also mostly those of people of color.
Yet, a question that remains after this debate was one that was puzzling even before the debate.
Why did he do it? Why did Bloomberg, who is not on the Nevada or South Carolina ballot, decide to join the debates before these contests?
Today, the mayor's campaign is probably buying tens of millions of dollars in ads to undo the damage done to him under the remorseless fire on his character, campaign and record from his rivals Wednesday night.
These attacks were predictable and predicted. Why did he submit to this? Who counseled Bloomberg to climb into the ring?
By investing $350 million in ads in primary states since November and crafting scheduled appearances while avoiding adversarial talk shows and candidate debates, Bloomberg had propelled himself from nowhere into the top tier of candidates in every state on Super Tuesday.
Why did he abandon a winning strategy to walk out, unprepared, onto a stage full of enraged and exasperated rivals who think he is buying and stealing a nomination for which they have fought for a year?
Why did he volunteer to enter a forum where he had to know his rivals would become a flash mob before he answered his first question? This was campaign malpractice of historic dimensions.
It is going to take hundreds of millions of dollars in new ads to undo the damage done to Bloomberg's reputation among the millions of voters who got their first impression of the mayor from the debate.
Where does the race stand before Saturday's caucuses in Nevada?
Sen. Bernie Sanders, his energy restored after his heart attack a few months back, his lines honed by a year's repetition, was at the top of his game Wednesday night, fending off attacks and fighting back with a passion and ferocity that Bloomberg never exhibited.
With his popular vote victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, five national polls showing him taking the lead from Joe Biden, and contributions pouring in from his huge army of small donors, Sanders is the favorite to win in Nevada and man to stop.
But after Super Tuesday, March 3, he may be unstoppable.
A new Washington Post poll Wednesday shows Sanders with a huge lead among young voters and in a statistical tie with Joe Biden among African Americans. And he is flush with cash.
March 4 could see Sanders with an almost insurmountable lead that could have him enter the Milwaukee convention with a majority of delegates or a plurality so huge as to make it politically impossible for his adversaries to gang up on him and take the nomination away.
For who would be the beneficiary of such a robbery on the convention floor? The same Bloomberg his rivals described Wednesday night as a misogynist, sexist and racist.
Bloomberg's campaign is sounding the alarm that Sanders could soon amass an insurmountable delegate lead if the Democratic field stays split, and is urging the other candidates to drop out.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Vice President Biden are being told that if they do not get out of the race and clear the lane for the mayor, they will get a socialist as their nominee, and the party will deserve the fate November will bring -- a second term for Trump.
Bloomberg's strategist Kevin Sheekey was pointedly warned by staffers on Thursday:
"If Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar remain in the race despite having no path to appreciably collecting delegates on Super Tuesday (and beyond), they will propel Sanders to a seemingly insurmountable delegate lead by siphoning votes away from (Bloomberg)."
As the other candidates cannot beat Sanders, Bloomberg's campaign is saying, they should step aside and clear the field for Mayor Mike. This would call for a spirit of self-sacrifice and measure of esteem for the mayor not evident on that stage Wednesday night.
Bloomberg is just another arrogant, entitled wealthy man, and very similar to Epstein and Weinstein. He truly believes that his money should automatically give him the right to run this country.
I hope the overwhelming majority of people don’t go along with his twisted egomaniacal belief.
Bloomberg is the only one who can beat Sanders at this stage. I think his first debate performance wasn’t as bad as the pundits say. He’s a smart guy with resources and will get better, but the debates are not as important as the money and the constant air time it gets him. When a normal Democrat votes, whether in a primary or the general, they will pull the Mike lever before the Bernie one.
Trouble for Democrats is many will go to Trump if the economy keeps rolling.
Exactly. He’s got so much dough that enough of the powers that be will tolerate anything as long as their palms are greased.
Probably, some of the others may hang on a month or so longer in order to raise campaign cash for personal use. Or parlay for a veep slot.
Bloomberg is a businessman who is used to giving orders and having them obeyed. He never quite understood that politics is very different. However, in NYC, once you’re the nominee with a D after your name, no one dares question you. It is very different in national politics.
Whether it is a fatal blow depends on only one thing, the next couple of debates.
If the other candidates continue to hammer him like they did in the last, he will never recover. He’s not a likeable candidate and lacks basic debate skills.
If this was a one and done and the candidates listen to the media and tone down their attacks, he survives until the convention and will probably be positioned near 2nd place in delegates.
I think Bloomberg should make the other candidates sign non disclosure agreements before the next debate. He can give them 5 million each but they can’t talk about his performance in the Las Vegas debate.
“Oh, I don’t think he will be the nominee.”
He has some $63 billion. If he spends just $2 billion it will set a record. Imagine if each of the delegates gets, say, $100,000. Oh, it will be done discreetly; book deals, franchises, a solarship for the kids, an anonymous person paying of credit card debt, etc. Probably each one would be handled by a separate lawyer with three degrees of separation to keep it “legal.” He might conceivably buy himself either the nomination or a place on somebody’s VP slot.
Can he buy an actual election? Not if the economy stays as good as it has been. The wild card is what a pandemic might do. Literally, China shut down every manufacturer for two weeks. It turns out two weeks is not nearly long enough. If that happened here we would see unparalleled panic which would probably play into the Democrat’s hands.
As I fast forwarded through yet another Bloomberg ad last night it struck me, Bloomie is running a general campaign during a primary, bulldozing everything and everyone in his way.
Great for keeping his primary opponents off the air.
Terrible in the long run because everyone with two functional brain cells will be sick and tired of the ads and the candidate and either tune them out or begin to hate the candidate.
While quantity has a quality of it’s own, often less is more.
Trump needs to stay out of that.
Let others go after Mike on that charge.
No. He’s buying the nomination. Period. Nothing has changed.
Could be.
His only pitch to Democrats as a Wall Street ex-Republican has been that “You all hate Trump. And I’m the guy who can beat him.”
If he can’t handle Warren and Klobuchar in a debate then Trump would absolutely slice him to ribbons.
Democrats have learned the only way they can win is if unopposed.
I see money, regarding elections, like power, regarding reaching the speed of light. Eventually, it takes infinite power or, in the case of the election, all of the money in the world.
I put it this way: If he were alive and free today, how much money would it take for Hitler to be elected leader of Israel?
Bloomberg is a case study in why campaign finance reform is not necessary.
Hillary bought off Bernie with a house. Bloomberg will buy off Bernie with his fourth house. He can and will buy whomever he needs to in order to win the primary.
Seeing him on the debate stage with PDJT will be heavenly.
The debate didn’t hurt Bloomberg at all.
Was Hillary Clinton the nominee in 2016 because she was great in the debates agains Sanders? No, of course not.
Bloomberg is Chosen. End of story.
China interfering in our elections! Hey, it could happen. Coronavirus could mutate into something ferocious, by next flu season. (1918 flu appeared in a mild version in the spring of 1918, then started killing ~20M people in the autumn.)
The media would call it Trump Flu.
“Bloomberg is a case study in why campaign finance reform is not necessary.”
I agree with you. Bloomberg is helping the Trump economy more than he is helping himself. (Imagine, though, if he was Hollywood handsome and as personable as, say, Jonny Carson. Yikes. Fortunately, fabulous good looks and money/intelligence/youth are not often found in the same package.)
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