Inside Bloomberg's Very Republican Campaign

I had a great afternoon on Sunday. I heard two inspiring congressional candidates speak at a fundraiser on Bunker Hill, Mike Siegel (TX-10) and Cenk Uygur (CA-25), one of Mike's supporters and a co-host of the event. Both were uplifting and inspiring, as were the other speakers. When I got home the phone was ringing. When I picked it up, it was a very calm, professional voice-- too calm and too professional-- attached to someone who wanted to ask me a few questions about the primary. I quickly realized it was a Bloomberg push poll. Those are very expensive and no other candidates would really be able to afford one on a national (Super Tuesday, presumably) scale. Once I realized it was a push poll, I asked the pollster how much Bloomberg was paying him for his soul and asked him if he is a whore and always ready to sell out his country. I also asked him if he would do the same job for Trump if Trump was paying him. It didn't end well.

Jonathan Swan, over at Axios was also noticing how corporate and buttoned up the Bloomberg campaign is-- a campaign right out of the pre-Trump-anarchy Republican Party playbook, just right for an oligarch. Swan, who spent a week on the campaign jet, explained why he got a corporate feeling about the whole operation, top to bottom, including his events. "It's calm, orderly and punctual. His audiences clap politely, and you can't walk two steps without running into a paid staffer with talking points. Nobody whoops or yells. Nothing is left to chance. No expense is spared. The candidate is self-consciously low-key. He compared the Mini-Mike rallies with the raucous, fascistic Trumpanzee rallies:

• The supporters I met didn't profess their love for Bloomberg like regular fans at Trump rallies, who come across as football fans cheering for their quarterback (though some wore printed T-shirts saying "I Like Mike").
• Bloomberg promises to govern quietly. "What about no tweeting from the Oval Office ever again?" he said to applause in Fresno.
• Even the protesters are well-behaved. During Bloomberg's speech in Compton on Monday, a young man, standing in silence, held up a sign saying, "Billionaires should not buy elections." At a Trump rally, the president would have told security to "get him the hell out!” At the Bloomberg event, a staffer politely asked him to move to the back.

The Bloomberg supporters Swan spoke with told him they "admired his wealth and accomplishments [and] expressed anxiety about the state of the Democratic field and were looking for a safe bet to beat Trump. One supporter said that you need a very rich man to beat Trump."

The words the Bloomie campaign is trying to pound into the skulls of the low-IQ morons who parrot whatever they're told are "pragmatic," "practical," "decency" (which is ironic and laughable), "sanity" and "commonsense plans that are workable." I guarantee you that eventually you will see mushy-brained Democratic voters (as well as low-end legislative endorsers who Bloomberg bought, like Haley Stevens (New Dem-MI), Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA), Scott Peters (New Dem-CA), Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL), Bobby Rush (IL), Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ), Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY) and Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT) being interviewed on MSNBC repeating those exact words to explain why they are backing a Republican oligarch in a Democratic Party primary. Today we hear that mediocre California Assemblyman Ian Calderon, for example, is endorsing Mini-Mike, citing his "practical progressive plans."

After Bloomberg's speech in the grassy courtyard at Fresno City College, Swan asked his state director, Dan Kanninen, about how different the sedate Bloomberg events are from Trump's raucous and profane hate-rallies. Kanninen spoke the way political operatives talk-- in terms of how to manipulate voters, saying that he thinks "there's a big element that wants a cooling rod in this boiling teapot."

Michael Bloomberg: American Oligarch by Nancy Ohanian

Later Swan sat down for a chat with Mini-Mike and asked him what he thinks of "the 'cooling rod' metaphor and whether he's self-consciously trying to lower the temperature of national politics." Bloomie responded that he isn't and that he's "just not a person that yells and screams. That's just not me. Never has been and probably won't be. I got elected three times without being rah-rah yelling and screaming, but being more rational and explaining. At my age, I'm not going to change. I'm just not going to get in a yelling and screaming match with him... He can yell and scream all he wants and I'll just sit there and say, 'Thank you, Mr. Trump, Mr. President,' and say my own thing in my own style, my own way."

Swan added that "on the other hand, while Bloomberg talks about returning to 'human decency,' his campaign mocked Trump for his 'obesity' just the day before our interview. I pointed out the comment to Bloomberg." Bloomberg acknowledged the ugly personal attack Trump-- it was a retort to Trump calling him Mini-Mike. But, Mini assured Swan that someone else in the campaign did it without asking him. I asked my internal contact inside Team Mini-Mike who laughed and said that that just "would not be possible. No one says anything to the press without explicit approval from Mike. He is the mice of mice-est managers and no one can use a piece of toilet paper without him approving first... I think Swan knows that and it's funny he let him off the hook so easily. Billionaires have that effect on everyone."

Asked whether it was the wrong thing for his campaign to put out a statement saying Trump was lying about his "fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan," Bloomberg laughed.

"I don't know why he'd find that objectionable," he said, finally.

Swan didn't ask him if he is trying to accomplish anything for the American people other than dispatching Trump-- or at least didn't include anything about that in his post. Nor did he remind his readers that Mini-Mike is responsible for the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In 2016 it looked like Democrat Katie McGinty was about to take the Pennsylvania Senate seat of reactionary Republican Pat Toomey, the kind of dedicated Wall Street whore Bloomberg loves. So Bloomberg funneled 12 million dollars into the Toomey campaign and Toomey won-- beating McGinty 48.9% to 47.2%, with the Bloomberg money stealing Chester, Bucks and Erie counties from McGinty. Toomey, happily reelected, went on to cast, with Susan Collins, the 2 deciding votes in the confirmation of the most far right member of the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh. Every horrible decision he votes on should be hung around Mini-Mike's neck.

As you probably know by now, Bloomberg announced his immigration plan. He stuck with Democratic orthodoxy he couldn't oppose, like protecting DREAMERs, ending family separations and ending construction of Trump's wall and supporting a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented immigrants already living in the country. But what makes it different is a visa program based on different regions of the U.S. with their own economic and social needs, as well as creating a special visa for students who want to stay in the U.S. after they graduate with certain degrees and for entrepreneurs who generate jobs.

Flagstaff progressive candidate for Arizona's first congressional district, Eva Putzova, doesn't trust Bloomberg to do what's right. "We need," she said, "to normalize the status of the 11 million undocumented people in the U.S, inclusive of DACA recipients, and the parents of DACA recipients (DAPA). We  need to reunite families who have been unjustly separated, and expand the Refugee Act to cover people fleeing climate disasters and domestic and other violence. We need to abolish ICE and put the immigration agencies back under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice as it was before 2003. We need an entire Immigrant Bill of Rights that includes the above points and many others as well. Michael Bloomberg has no intent to truly overhaul our broken and cruel immigration beyond simplistic, liberal-sounding, but totally inadequate proposals. More importantly, the presidency should not be for sale and it's disturbing that the Democratic Party is so quick to legitimize his undemocratic candidacy through such a widespread and concerted effort as we are seeing throughout our communities."

Gang's all here