Bloomberg Can't Win The Democratic Nomination-- Nor Should He

Yesterday, Election Science posted an interesting new national survey of Democratic primary voters by ChangePolls. Aside from just showing the horse-race results-- Bernie and Elizabeth tied at 23%, Status Quo Joe at 22% and Mayo at 14%-- it also shows the "approval voting results," which is a system in which "voters are able to vote for all the candidates that they support, meaning that similar candidates, such as Sanders and Warren, don’t split the vote." These are the results based on approval voting:

• Elizabeth- 74%
• Bernie- 64%
• Mayo- 61%
• Status Quo Joe- 53%
• Cory Booker- 32%
• Yang- 31%
• Klobuchar- 28%
• Castro- 25%
• Steyer- 17%
• Tulsi- 13%
• Bloomberg- 9%
• Deval Patrick- 8%
• Michael Bennet- 8%
• Marianne Williamson- 7%
• John Delaney- 4%

Bloomberg is high-lighted for a reason-- and it isn't just to rub in how dismally he's viewed by most Democrats. Writing for The Bulwark yesterday, Jeff Greenfield asked the salient question about Bloomberg's ego-driven run: Is There Any Rationale For a Bloomberg Candidacy? "The case against Michael Bloomberg's presidential run," he wrote, "seems strong. He’s a political chameleon, who went from Democrat to Republican (in order to find a place on the New York City ballot in 2001) to Independent to Democrat (again). He spent a lot of money in politics. Some of it helping Republicans, such as Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey. He’s the poster child for political excess, having dropped a quarter of a billion dollars-- that’s billion, with a 'b'-- in his three mayoral campaigns and having just launched his presidential bid with a $34 million buy, promising-- or threatening-- to spend a another billion. He’s a friend of Wall Street at a time when the Democratic party is turning toward an “eat the rich” view. He’s got a track record of insensitive comments and his recent apology for New York’s 'stop and frisk' policy that targeted minority men certainly looks like opportunism. And he’s 77-years-old, making Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Elizabeth Warren look positively youthful by comparison."

Greenfield insists on exploring a proposition being pushing by the consultants getting rich off Bloomberg's run, namely that he might be a strong candidate against Trump-- "and might even be plausibly considered the candidate with the best chance of being an effective Democratic president." Of course the folks who Greenfield is shilling for, will be very disappointed if they look sat the polling showing Bloomberg's 9% approval score, even though it's much higher than the 1% he gets in regular plurality polling. it's still a lot lower than half a dozen candidates who have no chance of winning the nomination-- Booker, Yang, Klobuchar, Castro, Steyer and Tulsi.

Greenfield's arguments are fatuous, if not absurd and not worth repeating, nonsense like an assertion that Bloomberg "may be the most reassuring candidate Democrats have. Throughout Trump’s presidency, the sense has grown of a public that is exhausted by a chief executive with no anchor, no hold on reality, and no sense of restraint. Some time ago, a lifelong Democratic operative and a right-wing political commentator both told me the same thing: that if the Democrats nominated a calm, reassuring-- almost boring-- candidate, Trump would lose in a landslide. This is contrary to the notion that a Democratic candidate must mobilize the core elements of the Democratic coalition, lest an unenthusiastic electorate stay home or choose a third-party candidate... Bloomberg’s very lack of ideological purity might make the progressive planks he does support more palatable to the middle." There we go-- the Bloomberg campaign identifying his real enemy: purity.

In fact, a brokered convention that Bloomberg buys off, allowing him to walk away with the nomination, would absolutely guarantee a second Trump term. Even Greenfield acknowledges that "If Bloomberg were to somehow prevail at a multi-ballot convention, Sanders and Warren supporters might well take a walk. If his strategy of bypassing the early states were to work, would Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada really work hard to the candidate who rendered their privileged positions null and void? And would voters be repelled by the sheer immensity of his spending, as New York City voters were in 2009 when their discontent with his 'purchase' of an exemption to term limits almost cost him a third term? So instead consider this not a prediction, but a modest notion: Mike Bloomberg’s campaign is a ludicrous exercise."