Posted on 02/21/2020 2:17:30 PM PST by billorites
What a catastrophe Wednesday night was for Mike Bloomberg. The New York plutocrat was kicked in the teeth by Elizabeth Warren in the first minutes — she denounced him as a Trump-like “arrogant billionaire” who called women “horse-faced lesbians” — and never made it back to his feet.
Bloomberg stood in mute fury as his $400 million campaign investment went up in smoke. His contempt for democracy and sense of entitlement surpass even Donald Trump, who at least likes crowds — Bloomberg’s joyless imperiousness makes Trump seem like Robin Williams.
That Bloomberg has been touted as a potential Democratic Party savior across the top ranks of politics and media is an extraordinary indictment of that group of people.
Some endorsements were straight cash transactions, in which politicians who owe their careers to Bloomberg’s largess repaid him with whatever compliments they could muster. How much does a man who radiates impatience with the idea of having to pretend to equal status with anyone have to spend to get someone to say something nice?
California Congressman Harley Rouda called him a “legendary businessman”: Bloomie gave her more than $4 million. New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill got more than $2 million from Bloomberg’s Independence USA Super PAC, and in return the Navy vet said Bloomberg embodies “the integrity we need.”
Georgia’s Lucy McBath, a member of the congressional black caucus, got $4 million from Bloomberg PACs, and she endorsed him just as an audio clip was coming out of the ex-mayor talking about putting black men up “against the wall” in stop-and-frisk. News accounts of the endorsement frequently left out the financial ties.
That’s fine. If you give a politician $2 million or $4 million, it must be expected that he or she will say you approximate a human being.
But how does New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman excuse writing “Paging Michael Bloomberg”? (Well, Bloomberg philanthropies donated to Planet Word, “the museum my wife is building,” says Friedman, so there’s that.) How about Jonathan Chait at New York, who wrote, “Winning the election is starting to look hard. How about buying it instead?” Or John Ellis in The Washington Post, who declared Bloomberg the “dream candidate”?
These pundits clung to a triumvirate of delusions: Bloomberg “gets things done,” he’s more electable than a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren because he can spend unlimited amounts, and he has the “toughness” to take on Trump.
Far from showing “toughness,” Bloomberg on Wednesday wilted under attacks from his five Democratic opponents. He was unprepared throughout and seemed to be ad-libbing the most important exchanges. When Warren asked him with how many women he’d had sign non-disclosure agreements, Bloomberg muttered:
Warren: How many is that?
Bloomberg: None of them accuse me of doing anything, other than maybe s— they didn’t like a joke I told.
The answer drew groans. Any political consultant could have told Bloomberg “they didn’t like a joke I told” would go over like a dead flounder. Either Bloomberg is a lousy campaigner who doesn’t understand the need for preparation, or he thinks he doesn’t need to prepare for live performances because he’ll just buy PR elsewhere.
Both explanations bode badly for a theoretical general-election campaign against Trump, an expert at ad-libbing cruelties and generating free media in amounts exceeding even what Bloomberg can buy. If Bloomberg can’t handle being asked by Warren how many NDAs he’s had signed, just imagine when Trump offers him a box to stand on and asks him how it feels to have to spend $4 million per friend.
Bloomberg’s entire argument for office is that he’s better than Trump, but where exactly is he better? The biggest argument against a Trump presidency involves his racial attitudes. Bloomberg’s record is worse.
His defense Wednesday of stop-and-frisk — that it was a widely used policy that got “out of control” because “too many” African Americans were stopped — showed that even after all this time, he still doesn’t get the problem, i.e., that the mass-profiling policy was fundamentally discriminatory. Trump is a crude circus nationalist, but Bloomberg’s policing policies were profoundly, intellectually racist, and he proved in Nevada that his only growth has been to recognize their political inexpediency.
Trump is worse on the environment and on guns. Bloomberg supported George Bush at the height of the Iraq War effort, and says he still doesn’t regret supporting that invasion. Bloomberg also has an awful record when it comes to Wall Street. In the debate Wednesday, he said this about 2008:
The financial crisis came about because the people that took the mortgages, packaged them, and other people bought them, those were—that’s where all the disaster was.
That’s in the ballpark of true, although Bloomberg stopped well short of denouncing the “people that took the mortgages,” by which one presumes he means banks. This is unsurprising, because when Bloomberg was not running for president as a Democrat, he ridiculed Occupy Wall Street and regularly spouted bogus Wall Street talking points deflecting blame from banks. This is what he said in November 2011:
It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.
Bloomberg then went on to say it was “entertaining” and “cathartic” for Occupy Protesters to “vilify” banks, a “let them eat cake” take on the financial crisis.
It would be impossible to find someone less believable as a reformer of Wall Street and an opponent of wealth inequality. Even Hillary Clinton was less of a guaranteed disaster on this issue. A vote for Bloomberg — a billionaire ex-Republican media executive, for God’s sake — would mean conceding the populist argument to Republicans again.
Trump has clear authoritarian tendencies and has wrapped his hands around autocrats, but for all the fretting about him perhaps not leaving office in 2020 if voted out, it’s Bloomberg who has already tossed term limits aside, and it’s Bloomberg who is openly trying to buy an election. There is zero evidence he will be any less of a threat to democracy or an agent for rapacious corporate interests than Trump.
Even assuming one could cross into believing that Bloomberg is somehow less revolting or dangerous than the current president — I don’t, but let’s say — Wednesday exploded the idea that he would have a superior chance at beating him than Sanders or a conventional, non-plutocrat politician like Warren or Pete Buttigieg. Bloomberg was a total zero charisma-wise, had trouble thinking on his feet, and failed to find even one issue where he sounded confident and convincing. His only distinguishing characteristic is his money, and fuck his money.
One revealing moment in the debate came at the end, when Chuck Todd asked all the candidates, “Should the person with the most delegates at the end of this primary season be the nominee?”
Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Warren, Joe Biden, and Amy Klobuchar all punted this question, deferring variously to the “rules” or the “process.” Only Sanders said, “The people should prevail.” This makes the endgame clear: All five non-Sanders candidates are placing hopes for the nomination in a backroom convention horse trade.
While the establishment Democrats like Warren and Buttigieg beat up on Bloomberg onstage last night, treating him like the interloper he is, the major question is, would they do the same in the privacy of that smoke-filled room this summer?
That’s the question that should have everyone worried. Sanders could lose, but a vote for Bloomberg would be a complete surrender to cynicism, and would probably fail besides. If that’s the plan, God help us.
It was fun watching the kiddie table debate between Klobo and Buttjudge, but come on. Let’s get on with it and decide whether it’s the commie or the republican wannabe.
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Well said!
But you forgot to mention quid pro slow joe. Did you forget about him?
> Matt Taibbi is always worth reading. Agree with him or not, he’s a very sharp writer. <
I never heard of the guy before now. But yeah, you’re right. That was a powerful, well-written piece.
I guess if a woman is horse-faced, then she isn’t a lesbian.
Any other advice, Liz?
Biden=Mondale. Even the democrats are too smart to nominate that.
Mike is a very arrogant billionaire.
Arrogance often pays.
Of course you’re right. Quid pro slow joe doesn’t even know where he is half the time. And the other half the time he doesn’t care.
Thanks for posting. Interesting article and thread. So Matt is pleading...give politics back to the parasites...er politicians. The unipartarians have done so much for the republic. Where have you gone extortionist Joe Bidenson? The politico class turns its lonely eyes to you.
> Heh, you mean some might object to nominating a former Republican mayor? <
A former Republican mayor who backed George W. Bush for president in 2004. Somebody (Bernie?) even brought that up at the last debate.
>>> horse-faced lesbians
Lord help me, I laugh every time I hear that.
Taibbi nailed Bloomberg's persona but good.
“The Bloomberg Myth Explodes on Live TV”
who says candidate debates are useless and don’t shed light on candidates’ capabilities?
Towards the end of the Republican debates in 2015-2016, i realized that the grossly biased, unfair, and misleading questions did indeed provide us with an amazing service: we got to see how the candidates would react and stand up to the pressure of such continued fake stream media attacks should they win the nomination, or even the Presidency ...
what we saw was that most folded up like cheap suits like most Pubs do when attacked by the fake stream media, but there was exactly one true champion up on those stages who not only did NOT whine, grovel, and apologize for being a conservative, but punched back even harder than he was being punched and then aggressively went on the attack, and that one true champion is our beloved Donald Trump ... we got to see the stuff that Donald Trump was made from, and that stuff was solid titanium ...
(btw, does anybody have a clue what Megan Kelley is up to these days now that she’s not being paid to be on television any more? You know, Megan the Media Whore who thought she was going to become an international media star for being the “journalist” who brought down Donald Trump ... “spending more time with her family”, perhaps?)
Biden is the handsy uncle who insists on sitting at the kiddie table
” just imagine when Trump offers him a box to stand on and asks him how it feels to have to spend $4 million per friend.”
i’m imagining that right now!
Rolling Stone, eh?
They’re likely in the tank for Bernie, so “rich guy” Bloomberg has got to go.
He is also, as we say in Boston, "wicked smaht."
Here is is talking for two hours with another liberal podcaster Joe Rogan. Great exchange.
He should have a hat (NOT MAGA) that says: If you can see this, vote for mini-mike!
If one of this crowd is the nominee, they lose to Trump in November.
Maybe this can’t be said publicly, but that’s got to be the way any thinking people would see it, and the way the DNC should be looking at it.
Which segment of their wildly fragmented party do the Dems WANT to lose to Trump? At this point, I think the Dems have to be giving up all hope of a nominee who “energizes” and helps downticket.
They can reign in their wacky “base” or accelerate toward the cliff.
This all presupposes that this is not going to be Hillary’s last hurrah.
I’m actually hoping Bernie beats Bloomberg just so the scumbag RINO Never-Trumpers won’t have anyone to vote for. Maybe they’ll resurrect Egg McMuffin.
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