PrintBloomberg a 'moderate' Democrat? Make that a 'micromanaging' Democrat
Michael Bloomberg is in the Democratic presidential race, and everyone is hailing his entry as the introduction of a new sort of creature for the Democrats, the "moderate."
Here's the WaPo tiptoeing onto that line:
The move marks a major reversal for Bloomberg, who announced in March that he would not run for president, and also serves as a public rebuke of the performance so far of former vice president Joe Biden, who has attempted to build a coalition of the same moderate Democrats that Bloomberg would court.
Here's this beaut from another supposed moderate, Amy Klobuchar, cheesed off at the competition, via Politico:
But Klobuchar, one of several candidates in the crowded moderate lane of the race that Bloomberg would also occupy, asserted that being displeased with the current crop of contenders was not a good enough reason on its own to join the fray.
"I certainly welcome Mayor Bloomberg to the race. He's done incredible work on gun safety, on environmental issues. And it is work of merit," Klobuchar said on CNN's "State of the Union." "But I don't think you just waltz in and say, instead of 'I'm good enough to be president,' your argument is the other people aren't good enough — that is not how we've been conducting these debates."
Moderate? Crowded moderate lane? What dreck. He's just a different kind of extremist in the same Democrat packaging.
He's slightly different in that he doesn't advocate charging ahead with full-blown 19th-century Marxist class warfare, a war on the rich, as the likes of frontrunners Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders do. Hard to do, after all, if you're a self-made billionaire, even if Tom Steyer masters it. But make no mistake: Bloomberg has a track record as mayor of New York, it's icky as heck, and what it reveals is that he's just as tyrannical and irresponsible as the rest of them.
Issues & Insights editorialist J. Frank Bullitt has just the right take-down reminder:
Bloomberg governed the five boroughs for a dozen years as if he were making household rules for his pre-teen children. There would be no Big Gulp–sized sugary soft drinks, no trans fats, and every calorie had to be counted. A "Complete List of Everything Banned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg" compiled by Gizmodo includes: cars in Times Square, high sodium levels in processed foods, Styrofoam for single-use food packaging, cabs that aren't fuel efficient, loud headphones, and cell phones in schools.
Some of the bans were proposed or merely suggested. But they still indicate a prohibitionist mind-set.
The "Republican" mayor is also an enemy of Second Amendment rights. Under his watch, a Manhattan store was even fined $60,000 by the city's Department of Consumer Affairs for selling lighters that looked like small pistols.
He's the archetypical nanny-stater, monitoring every little thing a teenager does, not just in that list Bullitt frames, but much more. I recall that he also stole New Yorkers' salt shakers off their tables in their diners, all for their own good. Bullitt probably wanted to give us just a whiff of how bad he was.
What's more, this micromanaging serves as a cover for ignoring more important things — such as Bloomberg's failure in 2012 to prepare the city of New York for the great Hurricane Sandy because he was so busy micromanaging the Big Gulps.
Since I used to do the Forbes billionaires list, years ago, I could also throw out that Bloomberg had a pretty archetypical devotion to detail seen in a lot of billionaires, as well as a fussiness over appearances. Most billionaires are like this; think Howard Hughes with his hand-washing, or J. Paul Getty with his cheapskate pay phone for guests. Even President Trump is like this to a small extent, but Trump never lets that personal fastidiousness translate to his way of governing. Bloomberg does, and because of it, he comes off as a hideous nanny from hell.
When you're a plutocrat with dreams of controlling everything and everyone yet can't go full blown Marxist, this is what you do.
Rest assured: a nanny leader nitpicking over every last thing you do, for your own good, is about as bad as Bernie Sanders taking control of the means of production. It's tyranny, same tyranny and control seen among the socialists, but wrapped up in another kind of packaging.
Read the whole thing here.
