Blogger Candidate Forum: Bloomberg

MIchael Bloomberg
cnn.com

Hello Everyone:

It is Wednesday and time for The Blogger Candidate Forum.  This evening the remaining candidates in the Democratic primary will take the stage in Nevada for another debate round.  A quick reminder, the Nevada Caucus takes place on Saturday and Super Tuesday is March 3, 2020.  If you need voter registration information, go to usa.gov.  Thanks  Making his debut on the stage is former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  Mayor Bloomberg's entry into the race presents an ethically vexing challenge for Democrats, especially those who lean more progressive.

Mayor Bloomberg is a billionaire with governmental experience.  He was mayor of the United States' largest city during which he presided over stop-and-frisk policing, which disproportionately men of color.  He supports many of the same causes progressively-minded voters supports: combating climate change, education, sensible gun control law, yet has said some very questionable things about women and minorities.  He is the founder of media and information company Bloomberg LP in 1981, raising questions of journalistic objectivity.  Mayor Bloomberg a vast fundraising infrastructure and is self-financing his campaign.  He generously donates and award grants to many worthwhile causes that progressive minded voters support and this is where the problem lies.  The fact that Mayor Bloomberg is staggeringly wealthy and has a seemingly endless fund-raising sources gives rise to this thought: Should Mayor Bloomberg become the candidate and beat the president, every bill signing or policy announcement is going to carry the taint of influence buying.  The question is Mayor Michael Bloomberg right candidate for the times?

The remaining viable candidates
casino.org

Tonight's debate, the ninth one thus far, will feature Mayor Bloomberg, who made the stage after polling at 19 percent, compared to VPOTUS Joe Biden (D-DE; 15 percent) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA; 14 percent).  Good enough to put in second place behind the front runner Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) who polls at 31 percent.  Since his late entry into the race, this past November, the second place finish is indicative of a surge in the polls, fueled by a massive advertising campaign on the social media, targeting the bigger more expensive states that vote later.  Without going through the early rounds over the summer, Mayor Bloomberg has managed to position himself as a stealth candidate.  Both the Gentleman from Vermont and VPOTUS have already called him out over buying the election.  Let us drill a little deeper.

Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg
newsone.com

 Mayor Michael Bloomberg is joined by Tom Steyer, a billionaire tech entrepreneur from the San Francisco Bay Area.  Mr. Steyer is also self-financing his campaign.  Here are some numbers to consider: Thus far Mayor Bloomberg has spent $417.7 million and Mr. Steyer $193.6 million of their own money  This sounds mind-blowing but $417.7 million is pocket change for Mayor Bloomberg whose estimated net worth is $64 billion.  "It's a bit more than six-tenth of 1 percent--the equivalent of someone worth $100,000 spending $650."  The potential here is the release of a tsunami of spending unlike previous campaign.  This unimaginable spending spree, for sacred Democrats, and the case for Mayor Bloomberg: Whatever his faults, he brings with him a bottomless war chest that he can access to defeat the president and carry with him congressional Democrats.

Mayor Bloomberg and Senator Sanders
nypost.com

Moderate Democrats may be willing to overlook Mayor Bloomberg's contradictory political history because he has the bottomless war chest as the antidote to the Gentleman for Vermont's socialism.  The concern for moderates is that his socialism will be too politically toxic or VPOTUS Biden is simply not up to the task.  For moderates, the Bloomberg campaign offers a compromise, albeit a grudging compromise.  Jonathan Chait of New York magazine observed,

Winning the president is starting to look hard,... How about buying it instead? 

This sounds like a winning strategy: "Trump has been a cruel and erratic president, and to his critics, defeating hims is of paramount more importance."  Most Democrats believe that money corrupts the political process and it would be better if Mayor Bloomberg spent his billions elsewhere.  Be that as it may, the current political process is what it is, and subjecting every campaign to a political purity test is far less important than winning right now.

This is how a bad system corrupts good people--"they do it by enlisting our self-interest to convince us to betray our values."  To be brutally frank, the American campaign finance system is a disaster.  Most candidates cannot self-finance their campaigns, forcing them to spend far more time than they care to making donor calls and attending fund-raising functions.  Even then, donations are limited to $2,800 per individual.  Since the Supreme Court believes that political spending is a form of protected free speech, the wealthy can spend as much on their campaign or on Super PACs to advocate their agendas.

Senators Sanders and Warren
vox.com

Thus populists like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and, yes, the president, have risen to the forefront because of Americans' disdain for a political process that has been hijacked by the wealthy.  "Bloomberg isn't so much a defense against those critiques as he is a confirmation of them."  The populists and the president (ironically) rally their supporters by claiming the system is rigged, elections sold to the highest  bidder, contemporary liberalism is window dressing on corporate America.  Mayor Bloomberg's campaign may be a test of whether this statement is true.  He may market (the appropriate term is this case) himself to centerists as the best option to the populists, "but in leveraging his fortune to fight them, he offers the country the (hopefully) false choice between populism and oligarchy."

In response to the Bloomberg surge, his critics have filled the Twitter-verse with clips of Mayor Bloomberg making disparaging comments about minorities, transgendered people, presiding over a sexually hostile workplace, and praising the controversial stop-and-frisk policy.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote:

Trump's authoritarian tendencies are naked on his Twitter feed, but Bloomberg;s imperial instincts, his indifference to limits on his power, are a conspicuous feature of his career.  Trump jokes about running for a third term:  Bloomberg actually managed it, bulldozing through the necessary legal changes.  Trump tries to bully the F.B.I. and undermines civil liberties; Bloomberg ran New York as a miniature surveillance state.  Trump cowed the Republican Party with celebrity and bombast; Bloomberg spent his political career buying organizations and politicians that might otherwise impede him.  Trump blusters and bullies the press; Bloomberg literally owns a major media organization.  Trump has Putin envy; Bloomberg hearts Xi Jinping 

The silver lining here is that it is a false choice, for now.  The myth of electability says that Mayor Bloomberg is a better choice than the Gentleman from Vermont or VPOTUS.  This is false.  The fact is the history of American elections is littered with losing campaigns of self-financing candidates, albeit none at the scale of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.