Kamala Harris For President?-- Better Than Trump, Better Than Bloomberg

Martin Luther King Day-- Good Morning America... Kamala Harris announced what everyone knew was coming: another senator with no notable accomplishments to her name-- other than in her own mind-- is running for the nomination to take on Señor Trumpanzee. She's not part of our Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President series. Instead we've been writing posts like these three, warning people she's not the best candidate the Democratic Party can come up with-- at least not at this point in her career:

• Getting To Know You, Getting To Know All About You... Kamala Harris
• A Case For Kamala Harris-- And A Case Against Her Rent Relief Act
• Ready For Kamala?

The San Francisco Chronicle announced the news by reviewing this morning's announcement speech and noting that she "had no legislative experience before winning election in 2016 to the seat opened by former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s retirement, having spent her career in district attorney’s offices and the California Department of Justice. In Washington, she has been in the spotlight for her sharp questioning at hearings of Trump administration officials, some of whom have bristled at her pointed style. Her influence has been less noticeable in policy as a first-term member of the minority party. Harris’ record in the Senate has trended toward the progressive Democratic base. She has been an outspoken advocate of immigration, a reflection of her constituency in California and her life story as the child of two immigrants.

Harris was also the first Democrat to announce in 2017 that she would co-sponsor Sanders’ Medicare-for-all bill, which would make the federal government the single payer of health expenses. And she has introduced legislation that would offer relief for middle- and lower-income families in the form of tax credits.

Her prosecutor background could be a liability among progressives, however, as critics have mined her record for lines of attack, including whether she was complicit in policies that disproportionately harm communities of color.

Harris addressed both her experience level and her history as a prosecutor in the “Good Morning America” interview, saying she has “the unique experience of having been a leader in local government, state government and federal government.”

She also noted that as a prosecutor, she represented sexual assault victims and homeowners victimized by predatory lending firms, and acknowledged that the justice system “includes systemic racism” and needs reform.

“It’s a false choice to suggest that communities don’t want law enforcement. Most communities do; they don’t want excessive force. They don’t want racial profiling,” Harris said. “Our system of justice has been horribly flawed and it needs to be reformed.”

She added, “There’s a lot of work to do, but to suggest it’s one or other-- no, I don’t buy that.”

Also this morning, Marc Caputo decided to catch Politico readers up with the nascent campaign of Republican multibillionaire Mike Bloomberg, who plans to buy the Democratic Party and use it as a vehicle to get into the White House. Democrats are wondering how much? He's just the kind of candidate much of the party establishment would love to sell out to: White. Male. Old. A Wall Street billionaire. The party's grassroots? Not so much. Like none? Caputo makes Bloomberg's weak case that "unlike any of the other presidential hopefuls, Bloomberg plays a dominant leadership role on two of the top issues on the minds of progressives heading into the 2020 cycle: climate change and gun control. He’s spent a decade as the nation’s preeminent financier on those issues, buying considerable goodwill in progressive circles. If he runs, those familiar with his thinking say, they’ll be the pillars of his campaign." I can hear the Green New Deal activists laughing their asses off as Bloomberg scurries to figure out how to sell himself as the avatar for Climate Change, an absurd proposition, although one that will probably take hold among corporate media.

Note, although Team Bloomberg (Schumer/Clinton operative Howard Wolfson) insists their employer hasn’t made up his mind yet-- and that he’ll make an official announcement within a month-- he bragged all of last summer at Bohemian Grove, to anyone who would listen, that he's determined to replace Trump in the White House.

No successful presidential campaign has ever been anchored to those issues. But the politics surrounding climate change and gun control have changed dramatically in recent years, and nowhere more than in the Democratic Party. In a splintered field where the former New York mayor’s message would be reinforced by a theme of governing competence and private sector success, those close to him believe Bloomberg could find traction despite his seemingly awkward fit.

“He’s not going to be running to the far left like the other candidates are. He describes himself as fiscally moderate, fiscally conservative, but he’s clearly socially liberal and he’s a key driver of social policies,” said a top Bloomberg insider. “For Mike, it’s not ideologically driven, It’s pragmatic. People die from an excess of guns in America. People are dying and suffering and will continue to from the effects of climate change.”

Bloomberg is polling and collecting “data,” the source said, and climate change and guns are “going to drive Democrats to the polls.” The politics of climate change have been front and center with the opening of the new Congress as Democrats discuss making a “Green New Deal.”

...As the philanthropist and founder of an eponymous news and information company publicly mulls a presidential bid, Bloomberg is already acting like a major candidate, except he has a net worth estimated at $51 billion, a vast network of activists who have depended on him for years and a private plane that can take him wherever he wants to hold events with them and soak up free media coverage.

In the past four months, Bloomberg has visited 27 cities, dropping off checks with grateful activists and mayors who want to fight global warming or the gun lobby or both. Bloomberg has contributed so much to gun control and climate change groups that aides can’t give a precise figure of the total donated to all over the years, estimating it at “hundreds of millions”-- $110 million of which was given to the Sierra Club alone for its “Beyond Coal” effort [perhaps part of the money the Sierra Club used against AOC in their support of corrupt New York scumbag Joe Crowley in 2018?]

Bloomberg, meanwhile, has privately met with political players about a potential 2020 bid, as he did in Iowa where he ostensibly traveled in December to screen a new documentary he financed about climate change, “Paris to Pittsburgh,” and spoke to Moms Demand Action, a gun control group affiliated with Everytown. He’s also hired an aide just to handle press inquiries about a potential bid and this month re-released his book, Bloomberg by Bloomberg.

On Jan. 29, Bloomberg returns to New Hampshire for his second visit, after making scheduled appearances in Northern Virginia, Annapolis and Washington D.C., where he’s scheduled to speak Monday at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration Breakfast with Rev. Al Sharpton.

It’s there, at a memorial for the civil rights icon with Sharpton, that the limits of Bloomberg’s progressive bonafides come into sharper focus. Sharpton, other black leaders and even federal courts have criticized the racially biased “stop-and-frisk” New York policing policies that Bloomberg embraced as mayor and that he recently stood behind as a necessary crime-fighting tool, despite evidence to the contrary. On his Iowa trip, protesters harangued him about stop and frisk and other issues.

Bloomberg insiders privately acknowledge stop and frisk is a liability in a Democratic primary. It’s not the only one.

At 76 years old, Bloomberg probably has one last chance to have a reasonable shot at the White House. And insiders are keenly aware that a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat will struggle in a party that’s drifted leftward. Also, the billionaire financial tycoon who saw Occupy Wall Street erupt in his city in 2011 when he was mayor will have some explaining to do to a party that’s concerned about wealth disparity.

But in a crowded Democratic primary where everyone moves left, the centrist, self-funding billionaire could have enough money and voters to sustain a long campaign that could last until the 2020 convention.

There’s also hope that, if Bloomberg runs, his activism on guns and climate will mute some of the incoming he would otherwise get from the left. So might the fact that he contributed an estimated $110 million to help 21 Democratic congressional candidates win in November.

“Bloomberg’s kind of money buys a lot of loyalty-- or at least silence,” said one top Florida Democrat. “Anyone else would be toast.”

It’s not that Bloomberg has merely purchased or rented support. Instead, Bloomberg has earned credibility by picking big fights long ago that weren’t so popular.

Climate change barely registered as an issue as recently as 2008 when Barack Obama he first ran for president. As an Illinois senator, Obama still had a measure of loyalty to the coal industry, and the jobs that came with it, in the south of the state. Since then, climate change has steadily risen in importance amid increased warnings from scientists, concerns about the intensity of killer storms and, especially for Democrats, President Trump’s labeling global warming a “hoax” and his decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords.

In reaction, Bloomberg help found a group called America’s Pledge to get cities, states, business and universities to meet climate change goals under the accords. He’s also the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Climate Action, and chairs a financial task force and board concerning Climate-Related Financial Disclosures and Sustainability Accounting Standards for private enterprise.

The Sierra Club’s executive director, Michael Brune, said Bloomberg has been “a leader on climate for 20 years.” And Heather Hargreaves, executive director of the NextGen America group funded by billionaire Tom Steyer, said Bloomberg has “obviously put his money where his mouth is.”

Hargreaves said that in 2008 even activists weren’t talking about climate change much. Now the major Democratic presidential hopefuls all have platforms.

The same is true of guns. When Bloomberg a decade ago started his first gun control group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, taking on the National Rifle Association was considered political suicide. On the 2008 campaign trail, Obama would only go so far as to say he supported “some common-sense gun safety laws.”

“I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms,” Obama said. “I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”

But today, all the major Democratic candidates and likely candidates for president, advocate for issues like an assault weapons ban or universal background checks, said Peter Ambler, executive director with Giffords' gun control group, which works in tandem with Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety.

Bloomberg was Part III in our Worst Democraps series and it's worth reading if you're interested in knowing why Bloomberg will never be the Democratic nominee for president no matter how much cash he spreads around among those who would sell their mothers and their souls--let alone their party and their country. I wonder if he'll offer Beto enough cash to run with him as a ticket.