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January 18, 2020

For Democrats worried about Bernie, Bloomberg's looking good

By Andrea Widburg

Democrats are running out of options.  So far, no candidate of the week has promised to be capable of beating President Trump and his supercharged economy or even of staying in the race.  Worse, Bernie, the candidate who almost certainly cannot win, is peaking at the perfect time, right before the primaries.  You can see the fear in a John Ellis opinion piece at the Washington Post:

At the moment, two realities drive the Democratic presidential campaign.

Reality No. 1: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is leading in most polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire. He's also the best organized in both states. And he's got a hot hand; what used to be called "momentum."

Reality No. 2: Democratic primary voters are, as Gallup put it, "thinking strategically about [their] 2020 nominee." Here's Gallup's write-up from two months ago: "Six in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would prefer to see the party nominate the candidate with the best chance of beating President Donald Trump, even if that person does not share their views on key issues. By contrast, 36% say they would rather have the reverse: a candidate aligned with them on almost all the issues they care about, even if that person is not the most electable."

So who is electable?  John Ellis thinks he has the answer:

Which helps explain why Democrats across the country will soon find themselves with a newfound appreciation for the virtues of one Mike Bloomberg, former Republican mayor of New York and billionaire founder of a financial data services empire.

What people don't yet seem to have grasped is this: Bloomberg is going to spend an astronomical amount of money on this race. Probably at least $1 billion. Maybe twice that. Possibly even more. Numbers like that upend every model of every presidential race in history. He can buy every news adjacency on cable and local television stations from now until November and not make a dent in his net worth. U.S. politics has never seen such financial throw weight in a presidential campaign.

With that kind of money, says Ellis, Bloomberg won't worry about early primaries.  When others run out of money, he'll be the last man standing on Super Tuesday — and he's already built an extraordinary infrastructure across America.

What Ellis misses, but Don Surber recognizes, is that Bloomberg is an awful candidate:

Mini Mike looks up at President Donald John Trump and thinks I am richer and smarter than him; I should be president.

And then the smarter, richer Mini Mike copies President Trump's brilliant plan that got him elected in 2016. Or tries to. Clones pale compared to the original.

Part of Donald Trump's plan was to use the media to bombard the electorate with his image and his policies.

Mini Mike said me too, and is buying ads to do this.

The trouble with campaign ads is they are commercials, which people dismiss as propaganda. Donald Trump gains attention by earning media.

To support his point, Surber points to the execrable tweets "Team Bloomberg" is sending out in an effort to copy Trump's genuine, edgy, and on-point tweets:

(You can see more awful Bloomberg tweets at Surber's site.)

Donald Trump, of course, gets it:

Ellis and others also forget that Bloomberg is divorced from the real world.  While Trump is a real guy who can talk to ordinary people on a construction site, Bloomberg lives a bizarre life of lavish mansions around the world, private planes, and uncountable cars.  Worse, this carbon-spewing man promises to shut down America's coal plants, throwing thousands out of work:

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is plunging $500 million into an effort to close all of the nation's remaining coal plants by 2030 and put the United States on track toward a 100% clean energy economy.

[snip]

Bloomberg said he'd work with states and utilities to shutter "every last U.S. coal-fired power plant by 2030." It's a goal he says is achievable -- "we're already more than halfway there," he said, touting the 289 coal-fired power plants shut down since 2011 through a partnership between Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Sierra Club.

It's hard to imagine ordinary Americans feeling the love for a charmless, tone-deaf, hypocritical billionaire who wants to manage their lives, disarm them, and throw them out of work.  In other words, Democrats are contemplating a repeat of 2016: jettisoning the unelectable Bernie in favor of a tin-eared, unpleasant, corrupt, filthy-rich candidate.

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