Republican Oligarch Got A Baptism By Fire Into Democratic Presidential Politics

Billionaires should not exist

Bloomberg couldn't hide behind his half billion dollars-- so far-- in TV and radio ads on Wednesday nigh, although he did run a fake Obama endorsement ad just as the debate was starting. But that didn't save him from what his get-rich-quick campaign advisors apparently failed to adequately prepare him for. If Team Mini-Mike thought making it to the debate stage was a victory, they were quickly disabused of that silly notion. The first poke at the piñata came from Elizabeth Warren-- who probably still remembers Bloomberg helping to fund her Republican opponent, Scott Brown, 8 years ago (despite his "A" score from the NRA).





"I have no doubt that he is about to drop, tonight, another hundred million dollars on his campaign… in order to try to erase America’s memory of what happened on that debate stage," said Elizabeth Warren after spending much of the night successfully excoriating billionaire oligarch Michael Bloomberg during his first debate appearance. The morning after, conventional wisdom was clear: Bloomberg bombed. He was the hands-down loser of his first debate-- and everyone's idea of a villain.

CNN pundit Chris Cillizza didn't beat around the bush when naming Bloomberg Wednesday night's biggest loser. "The first hour of the debate," he wrote, "was an absolute and total disaster for the former mayor. He looked lost at times-- and those were the best times for him! Warren dunked on him repeatedly. Sanders slammed him. Biden bashed him. It was like watching a pro wrestling match where everyone decided to gang up on a single wrestler in the ring-- and that wrestler was totally and completely caught off-guard. Bloomberg is still very, very rich-- and will continue to spend his money on the race. So he's not going away. But it's hard to see how the momentum Bloomberg had built through his heavy ad spending wasn't slowed considerably by a performance that slid waaaaay under what was a very low bar of expectations."

The Politico staff assessment of the debate was that "Bloomberg took the brunt of the fire after spending his way onto the debate stage for the first time... [and] he’ll have to hope that what happened in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Eric Levitz noted that "It must have taken the billionaire mere minutes to realize he had made a costly mistake. Bloomberg’s primary strategy-- avoid all engagement with (small-d) democratic processes and hide your liabilities behind half-a-billion dollars in television ads-- had been working like gangbusters. Without participating in a single nomination contest or debate, the former mayor had purchased himself second place in national polls, and a lead in several Super Tuesday states. But something inside the mogul-- either his ego, or some sense of civic propriety-- prevented him from forgoing the DNC’s invitation to compete in an arena where great wealth offers no significant advantage. His overexposure was almost instantaneous. Bloomberg was surrounded by men and women who’d spent nearly two years ingratiating themselves to Democratic audiences with fine-tuned talking points. By contrast, the mega-billionaire has spent much of the past decade moving in circles where he could say things like, “I can teach anyone to be a farmer,” and be greeted by nodding heads. His utter dearth of affect, charisma, and eloquence would have been damaging enough by themselves. But Bloomberg didn’t just have the poorest rhetorical tools of any candidate on the stage; he also had the most daunting oratorical task. There is probably no good way to explain why you will not release the women who’ve accused your company of sexual harassment from their nondisclosure agreements. But this is surely among the worst:

"Bloomberg’s best hope," Levitz concluded, "is that our politics are too dysfunctional for any of this to matter. His commercials will be viewed far more widely than tonight’s debate. So, perhaps another $1 billion worth of ads will count for more than his total lack of political skill. The billionaire can still win, but only if democracy loses."

Back at Politico, Sally Goldenberg and Chris Cadelago noted that "Bloomberg emerged so diminished that the other billionaire Democrat in the race-- who failed to qualify for Wednesday's debate stage-- stepped in wielding a platinum dagger. 'One lesson from tonight,' Tom Steyer concluded of the evening, 'looks like Mike Bloomberg might be running in the wrong primary.'... Bloomberg spent the past 10 weeks flooding the airwaves with ads, racking up endorsements and climbing into contention ahead of his Super Tuesday debut. And in two hours Wednesday night, he risked losing those swift gains as he stumbled through his first nationally televised primary debate. He was rusty. He was testy. He was out of touch. And, for a candidate often shielded by the scripted one-liners of killer campaign advisers, he was on his own-- unable to hide his peevish demeanor and unable to portray himself, as his campaign has tried to do, as the clear choice to stop Bernie Sanders and beat Donald Trump... During a tit-for-tat with Sanders over whether workers should be able to sit on corporate boards, Bloomberg replied, 'Absolutely not. I can’t think of a way that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get reelected than listening to this conversation.'"

Ilana Novick, writing before the debate, predicted that if Bloomberg manages to buy the nominate progressives will stay home and just not vote-- not even against Trump! "Democrats, terrified of the prospect of another four years of Trump," she wrote, "have claimed they’ll 'vote blue no matter who.' Ryan Cooper of The Week was among that group, that is, until Bloomberg entered the race. First of all, Cooper writes, 'it is not at all obvious that Bloomberg would even be a better president than Trump.' Per Cooper: 'He locked up thousands of protesters during the 2004 Republican National Convention (where he gave a speech warmly endorsing George W. Bush, and thanked him for starting the war in Iraq), and a judge held the city in contempt for violating due process law. He created what amounted to a police state for New York Muslims, subjecting the entire community to dragnet surveillance and harassment, and filling mosques with spies and agent provocateurs. The city had to pay millions in settlements for violating Muslims’ civil rights. (All this did precisely nothing to prevent terrorism, by the way.)'"

Arguments for Bloomberg’s candidacy stress his wealth as a plus, a kind of monetary insulation against outside influence, and his self-made billionaire status as a key weapon against Trump. They also reference Bloomberg’s work on fighting for gun control and against climate change.

As Josh Barro writes in New York Magazine, Bloomberg is “17 times wealthier than President Trump.” Plus, Barro adds, “unlike Trump, he’s a self-made billionaire.” In Vox, Emily Stewart argues that the former New York City Mayor and current Democratic candidate for president “has all the resources he needs to combat the Trump machine, and he doesn’t have to spend time and energy courting donors and then returning favors to them if and when he’s in the White House.”

Cooper concedes that while “Bloomberg does have a legitimate history of supporting gun control and climate policy,” including his work with Everytown for Gun Safety, “it is exceedingly unlikely that he will be able to get past a Senate filibuster on gun control, especially given his sneering know-it-all approach.”

Money also can’t prevent journalists from looking closely at Bloomberg’s record. The New York Times observed this past week that the campaign has been “on the defensive over past recordings that showed him linking the financial crisis to the end of discriminatory “redlining” practices in mortgage lending, and defending physically aggressive policing tactics as a deterrent against crime.”

Bloomberg claimed during a campaign stop in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last week that being elected mayor of New York City three times means “the public seems to like what I do.” He neglected to mention, as Politico points out, that the then mayor “orchestrated a change in municipal law so he could run for that third term, vastly outspent his opponent and won the race by fewer than 5 points.”

The ability to buy your way into power is not proof that people like what you do-- for Bloomberg or for Trump. As Arwa Mahdavi writes in The Guardian, “If these two billionaires end up battling it out for the presidency, I am not sure it matters who wins in November. Democracy will have lost.”