You Never Thought You Would Vote For A Republican Oligarch But You Are Considering Doing So This Time? Please Read This First So You Don't Slit Your Wrists In 2021

Over the weekend, Bernie was in Nevada, where a new poll shows him leading in this next-up caucus state (next Saturday). He's not just leading; he's surging while his closest competitor, Status Quo Joe, is collapsing and has all but abandoned Nevada for South Carolina.

• Bernie- 25%
• Status Quo Joe- 18%
• Elizabeth- 13%
• Steyer- 11%
• Mayo Pete- 10%
• Klobuchar- 10%

Republican oligarch Michael Bloomberg won't be on the ballot Saturday but Bernie has been keeping a cautious eye on him. Last week, at the Clark County Democratic Party dinner, he criticized Mini Mike's longtime opposition to raising the minimum wage, which, for the sake of gaining votes, he has now flip-flopped on. Bernie also noted that Bloomberg has always backed Austerity plans that included cuts to Medicare and Social Security and that he opposed efforts to hold "the crooks on Wall Street accountable." Bernie told the party activists that "Regardless of how much money a multi-billionaire candidate is willing to spend on this election, we will not create the energy and excitement we need to defeat Donald Trump if that candidate pursued, advocated for and enacted racist policies like 'stop and frisk' which caused communities of color in his city to live in fear."

A Trump vs Bloomberg general election would be asking Democrats to participate in a Republican primary between a fascist and a mainstream conservative. Last week Sonali Kolhatkar noted that Mini Mike is having a moment as elites abandon the floundering Biden and turn to the big-spending oligarch. "One," she wrote, "could attribute this rise to the insane amount of cash he has spent on his campaign-- more than $200 million so far-- out of his own bottomless pockets to blast commercials on every platform as he sells himself to the public. Now, liberal pundits are contemplating things like, 'It is time to earnestly consider the possibility that Bloomberg will be the Democratic nominee for president.' But are we honestly considering him a serious candidate?"

Bloomberg’s main stint with politics was as mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, during which time he pushed aggressively to criminalize and racially profile people of color under the guise of the “stop and frisk” policing model. The idea was simple: Preemptively arrest poor Black and Latino men, and crime rates would magically drop. Thousands of men were ruined in Bloomberg’s dragnet, and the policy persisted until legal challenges forced the city to end the program with a judge declaring it unconstitutional. In launching his bid for the White House last year, Bloomberg stood in front of black congregants at a church and said, “I want you to know that I realize back then I was wrong.”

Perhaps the billionaire candidate simply expected that his money would wash the stench of racism away.

...Perhaps Bloomberg hopes white liberals can set aside any misgivings about his racism simply because they are fantasizing about the unlimited access to his campaign cash to defeat Trump. Bloomberg is currently the ninth richest person on the entire planet. In a sincere sounding op-ed in the New York Times, he explained how “the rewards of the economy are far too concentrated at the top,” and that he is “making the system fairer and more progressive, including by increasing taxes on wealthy people like me.” But only three years ago, Bloomberg-- in a conversation with the then-head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine La Garde-- explained that he was in favor of regressive taxation because it helped socially engineer poor people’s habits:

Taxes are regressive, yes they are. That’s the good thing about them because the problem is in people that don’t have a lot of money and so higher taxes should have a bigger impact on their behavior and how they deal with themselves. So I listen to people saying, ‘Oh we don’t want to tax the poor.’ Well, we want the poor to live longer so that they can get an education and enjoy life. And that’s why you do want to do exactly what a lot of people say you don’t want to do… If you raise taxes on full sugary drinks, for example, they will drink less and there’s no question that full sugared drinks are one of the major factors in obesity and obesity is one of the major factors to heart disease.

While this clip has not received as much attention as Bloomberg’s defense of “stop-and-frisk,” it is just as instructive about his attitude toward low-income people. A multibillionaire’s opinion of those on the bottom rung of society is-- unsurprisingly-- utterly distorted by his obscene wealth.

How exactly can a racist, classist billionaire be favored by Democrats? As Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders continues to build momentum, the liberal establishment is in full panic mode. All of the superficial criticism they have cast at Sanders-- that he’s an old white man who has been a Democrat for barely a minute-- apply just as equally to Bloomberg. But what is most critically important to Bloomberg’s backers is that his politics are the polar opposite of Sanders. Just days after the disastrous Iowa caucuses, the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson bizarrely declared Bloomberg “the biggest winner,” even though he skipped the caucuses. Robinson’s reasoning was that “the chaos in the Democratic Party and Trump’s White House are making Bloomberg’s argument for him.”

The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman this week opined that Bloomberg “has the best chance to carry the day” in a match-up against Trump and that he is “a moderate progressive with a heart of gold but the toughness of a rattlesnake.” The words “moderate progressive” are code for “not a Democratic Socialist like Bernie Sanders.” Defenders of the establishment are terrified that in a bid to sweep away Trump and his policies, too many Americans will want to strip wealthy liberals of their power and money as well.

For all the fears that [establishment] Democrats have about a Sanders’ nomination, the worst that Trump could accuse Sanders of doing is sticking to a set of economic, racial and gender justice principles for 40 years. He could harp on Sanders’ avowed socialism, but polls show Americans are actually quite receptive to socialism. He could lie and call Sanders a communist, but the Senator could retort, as he has already done, “Obviously I am not a communist,” even if Trump “maybe doesn’t know the difference.”

In demonizing Sanders and all he represents, Trump is siding with the likes of former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who is so terrified of Sanders he worried the senator would “ruin the economy” as president. By that comment, Blankfein of course means that Sanders plans to upend an economy that is working very well for him and terribly for the rest of us. Trump, Wall Street executives and wealthy elites like Blankfein and Bloomberg are all arrayed against threats to the corporate stranglehold on America. They are all part of the same team, and yet establishment Democrats claim there is a difference between Trump and Bloomberg.

As Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren dip in the polls, Bloomberg’s numbers are rising. In a head-to-head matchup with Trump, one poll showed him beating the president by the widest margin of all Democratic candidates. But Bloomberg has so far benefitted from scant media coverage and as journalists dig deeper, his many skeletons are tumbling out of the closet. He has also not yet faced his challengers on a debate stage. If he does cinch the nomination, picture Trump ripping him apart over his comments about crime in minority neighborhoods and his patronizing attitudes toward poor people.

Sanders surrogate Nina Turner, in a recent interview on MSNBC, dared to call Bloomberg an “oligarch” and raised the ire of liberal pundits. But the word “oligarch” is defined as a member of a nation’s economic elite unfairly using their status and money to wield power. Former Labor secretary and popular progressive author Robert Reich explained that, yes, at this stage, anyone is better than Trump and that “[o]ligarchy is better than tyranny.” But, he added, “neither is as good as democracy.”

Bloomberg’s immense wealth allows him to bypass the traditional reins of accountability that the public has over a candidate running for election. Bloomberg doesn’t need the public to donate to his campaign, and therefore there is no guarantee that as president he would care about serving the public. Already with Trump in the White House, we are suffering the ill effects of an unaccountable wealthy person who cares more about his money than his country. How can anyone who wants to defeat Trump want to replace him with someone not unlike him?

Alan Grayson's Twitter poll yesterday shows a lot of dissatisfaction with Bloomberg. He's far less popular than the other two conservative Democrats running, Status Quo Joe and Mayo Pete.

Maybe that's because plenty of Democrats agree with widespread assertions that he's a Republican plutocrat trying to buy the Democratic nomination. In Current Affairs Michael Robinson wrote that "The idea of Michael Bloomberg becoming the Democratic presidential nominee should be too absurd to even consider seriously. For one thing, he is a conservative who openly believes that the poor should be ruled over by the super-rich and is trying to buy the nomination outright. He has a history of saying monstrously offensive things about women and transgender people, and oversaw an infamous racist police regime that terrorized Black and Hispanic New Yorkers. If he did somehow manage to spend his way to the nomination, bypassing the democratic process, it would be such an outrage-- and so demoralizing to the Democratic base-- that it would guarantee Trump’s reelection. If the choice were between two sexist billionaires who hate the poor, how many young people would drag themselves to the polls to support “our side’s” billionaire? It would permanently disillusion an entire generation and vindicate every cynical theory of politics as a domain where money rules absolutely. But, troublingly, Michael Bloomberg’s candidacy has not entirely been laughed out of the room. A number of prominent Democratic officials, liberal intellectuals, and celebrities have endorsed him, including San Francisco mayor London Breed, Illinois congressman Bobby Rush, Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs, Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo, TV’s Judge Judy, and singer John Mellencamp. Henry Louis Gates promoted Michael Bloomberg, and Evicted author Matthew Desmond effusively praised Bloomberg’s housing plan (without officially endorsing him). Some of this seems a little strange-- why is a sociologist known for studying evictions boosting the guy responsible for the New York homelessness crisis? Why are dozens of liberal elected officials suddenly stumping for a Republican billionaire?"

Well, first of all, virtually none of the elected officials endorsing Bloomberg is "liberal." Most of them are conservatives like Bloomberg (such as Wall Street shill Gina Raimondo) or, worse, corrupt buckets of slime like Bobby Rush, which Robinson notes: "In the case of some elected officials, the answer seems to be simple bribery. Bloomberg 'has supported 196 different cities with grants, technical assistance and education programs worth a combined $350 million' and 'now, leaders in some of those cities are forming the spine of Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign.' The mayors have all 'attended his prestigious boot camp at Harvard that gives the mayors access to ongoing strategic advice from Bloomberg-funded experts' and 'more than half have received funding… worth a total of nearly $10 million.' Bloomberg has been good to them and promises to keep being good to them in the future; endorsing him will probably guarantee the cash keeps flowing. Bloomberg hands out bags of money, they come on board."

Just as bad are the conservative Democratic Party elites who just care about one thing: stopping Bernie. Some would prefer Trump. Other believe Bernie can't win, regardless of polling points to the opposite, namely that Bernie has the best chance of any Democratic candidate of beating Trump. Much of this is based on wrongly thinking that ignorer to win, Democrats need to win moderate Republicans. Even if there are any "moderate Republicans," Democrats can win without them-- by exciting their own base and by winning independents. And that's Bernie's strength.

Bloomberg has never been shy about being a free-market conservative waging war on the poor, and the only reason it isn’t immediately obvious that he is right-wing is that so many Democrats have also been free-market conservatives waging war on the poor. Sure, his 2020 campaign has slapped together some hastily plagiarized literature pitching him as progressive, and he is publishing op-eds claiming that “fixing inequality is my priority.” After years of staunchly defending racist policing practices, he apologized for them the moment he began the campaign. But none of this should persuade anyone familiar with Bloomberg’s actual record.

Remember that Bloomberg himself says he is the type of conservative who believes in slashing the government to bits:

I actually am a conservative-- more so than other conservatives in the sense that I think you could go and cut 2 or 3 percent out of the budget in every agency. We’ve done that 12 times… 

Indeed, as New York City mayor, the billionaire mayor vowed to smash working people’s unions. He adopted an “aggressive approach to reforming the pension system” and made it his No. 1 legislative priority. He “threatened to withhold worker raises unless the municipal unions yielded on benefits.” Bloomberg vowed that nobody would get raises unless they accepted benefit cuts:

“Today, I will make this commitment: I will not sign a contract with salary increases unless they are accompanied by reforms in benefit packages that produce the savings we need…”

When transit workers went on strike after the transit authority’s attempted to raise the retirement age and substantially increase pension contributions, Bloomberg called them “selfish,” “greedy,” and “thuggish.” He even attacked the morality of the city’s firefighters. He eliminated the employee protection plan for the city’s 8,000 school bus drivers, leading to a strike. Bloomberg told public sector workers that “we have to find ways to do more with less” and would not pledge to end layoffs, even as the city spent millions on private consultants. Bloomberg said he wanted workers who appreciated that they should be grateful to the private sector for their salaries: “The unions I will get are the unions who understand that the private sector pays for the work of municipal employees.” (Bloomberg also spent $3 million backing right-wing Michigan governor Rick Snyder-- remembered for the Flint Water Crisis and seizing power from Black-led cities-- in part because Snyder “took on the unions.“)

Bloomberg has never shown himself to care much about workers’ rights. He once ordered that a low-level city employee making $27,000-- supporting a wife and child-- be fired after Bloomberg noticed Solitaire open on the man’s computer. Bloomberg forced the resignation of the director of the city’s first Arabic dual language school program after ludicrous allegations that she was a terrorist sympathizer. When Bloomberg found out that a New York City teacher had previously been a sex worker, he demanded she be fired, saying, “We’re just not going to have this woman in front of a class.” The teacher was suspended and ultimately had to resign.

Bloomberg’s own company was sued by 72 women who claimed “the company discriminated against them by decreasing their pay, demoting them, and excluding them from other employment opportunities after they became pregnant,” with one senior executive allegedly remarking “I’m not having any pregnant bitches working for me.”

Bloomberg has always opposed traditional Democratic policies for improving the lives of working people. He said he is “not, and [has] never been in favor of raising the minimum wage” (giving the usual discredited talking point about job loss), and as mayor vowed to veto a living wage bill, comparing it to Soviet Communism and promising to fight it in court. Bloomberg is a believer in “trickle-down” economics, whereby helping the rich helps the poor:

The way to help those who are less fortunate is, number one, to attract more very fortunate people. They are the ones that pay the bills.

This is far from the only time that Bloomberg suggested inequality was good and the city needed to lure more rich people. If the city was divided into rich and poor, he said, it was “one group paying for services for the other,” meaning that the poor should be grateful for their benefactors. He called New York City a “luxury product,” and said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?” and “If we could get every billionaire around the world to move here it would be a godsend that would create a much bigger income gap.”

Bloomberg’s New York was intensely friendly to rich developers. His city planning director, Standard Oil heir Amanda Burden, stated the administration’s aspirations: “What I have tried to do, and think I have done, is create value for these developers, every single day of my term.” Little-noticed zoning changes protected rich people’s neighborhoods from development and put poor neighborhoods up for grabs. Billionaires building luxury towers in New York City pay almost nothing in property taxes, and CityLab concluded of Bloomberg’s plan to lure as many billionaires as possible that “what Bloomberg saw as a way to provide for the welfare of New York looks more like one of the firmest expressions of inequality anywhere.” CityLab writes that “the property-tax burden has shifted from owners to renters, and from the wealthier to the poorer.” Under pressure, Bloomberg introduced a “market-based” solution for affordable housing, but it produced a pitifully small number of affordable units and “affordability” was often a joke, with units accessible only to those making more than the median income. Public housing was neglected, and “under Bloomberg, the city stopped checking for lead paint in public housing apartments, a disastrous decision that endangered thousands of children.” Kate Albright-Hanna describes the destructive effects of the Bloomberg philosophy for City & State New York, and warns what would happen to the country if Bloombergism were enacted on an even larger scale:

New York City is under siege, vanishing, empty or already dead as a result of the “Bloomberg Way”-- the concept of the mayor as CEO, businesses as clients, citizens as consumers, and the city as a product that’s branded and marketed. Bloomberg’s corporate worldview drained the color out of New York City-- a sterile, relentless kind of destruction that dehumanized its victims with the logic of the market… Bloomberg invited global investors to knock down old brick buildings and erect glassy, lifeless towers of secrecy that housed the wealth of foreign oligarchs and kleptocrats.

...Unsurprisingly, Bloomberg’s tenure saw an explosion in both rent prices and homelessness. By the end of Bloomberg’s time, “half of renting households paid more than 30 percent of their income in rent and utilities.” Commercial rents soared too, and beloved mom ‘n’ pop stores that had been in the city for decades closed by the hundreds. (Moss’ blog is a heartbreaking catalog of these.) The St. Vincent’s Hospital was shuttered and turned into luxury condos, just one of nearly 20 hospital closures between 2000 and 2013.

At the end, nearly one of every three children in the city resided in poverty, and the “record-high shelter population includes more than 22,000 homeless children.” The New York City Coalition For The Homeless has been absolutely scathing, noting that “the number of homeless people in NYC has soared to all-time record highs under Bloomberg; and the number of poor New Yorkers has also risen and remains at alarming levels.”

...Former City Council chair Christine Quinn [no progressive herself] was blunt: “In a time of prosperity, he took aggressive steps from a policy perspective to hurt the homeless.” Bloomberg’s idea of a solution to homelessness was giving them one-way bus tickets to get them out of the city. Today, Bloomberg insists that inequality is a top priority, but before his sudden transformation into a Democrat, Bloomberg said of inequality that “that’s not a measure of something we should be ashamed of.” (Recall he specifically wanted billionaires to move to New York to increase the “income gap.”)

...Bloomberg reserved his sympathy for bankers. As mayor, he gave Goldman Sachs more than a billion dollars in tax breaks to build a headquarters in New York. Later he said Occupy Wall Street was unfairly targeting financial industry workers who were “struggling to get by.” After all, he said, “This is our industry. We’d appreciate it if someone recognized that this is our tax base.” He was scathing about the Obama administration’s effort to regulate banks after the financial crisis, calling fines “outrageous” and suggesting that Wall Street insiders, rather than Congress, should be writing the laws, and has supported cutting the corporate tax rate. He called raising taxes on the rich “about as dumb a policy as I can think of,” making his usual case that rich people give us everything, describing Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax as “mean.” Bloomberg can be comically out of touch with working people; when the city was crippled by a blizzard he suggested residents use the free time to take in a Broadway show.

Bloomberg also established an insidious patronage system, whereby he would “slash funding in the city’s budget [then] backfill those cuts with anonymous donations.” This allowed him to boast of being a cost-cutter, but also made organizations completely depend on his largesse, meaning that the moment he personally decided to take funding away, it was gone, and forcing them to stay on his good side. (Remember, when billionaires give away money, it has nothing to do with generosity and should not be seen as virtuous, because it costs them nothing. If I give away $50, it is more meaningful than Michael Bloomberg giving away $50 million.) By making more and more organizations dependent on him, Bloomberg took decision-making out of the democratic sphere and turned it over to himself. This is clientelism, a system built on financial quid-pro-quos, and naturally “the mayor and his top deputies… pressed social service, arts and neighborhood groups that receive donations from Mr. Bloomberg to express support for his third-term bid by testifying during public hearing.” (A useful and comprehensive article on the Bloomberg Way in the International Socialist Review also explains how Bloomberg’s “philanthropy” offers solutions to problems he himself creates, such as funding organizations that help men with drug convictions get jobs while escalating drug arrests. It shows how Bloomberg’s wealth is dependent on making sure the financial sector never stops growing.)

I am sure you can guess what Michael Bloomberg’s education policy was like. He’s a strong believer in testing and charters and believes school is about preparing children for the job market. He has been a major contributor to “school choice” initiatives around the country. As mayor, he seized control over the schools, let private charters use city school buildings, and pushed for school closures. He tried to cut $170 million from early childhood education and after-school programs. He says he believes in doubling class sizes and halving the number of teachers (which is bananas). “Everybody I know in my generation went to classes of 40 or more. And education by some people’s argument was as good then as it is today,” he explained. Bloomberg went to war with teachers unions, who he compared to the NRA, and teacher morale was dismal. Bloomberg controversially appointed publishing executive Cathie Black to be school chancellor, a charter school advocate and union opponent who irritated educators and soon had to resign after jokingly suggesting that the solution to school overcrowding was birth control.

Bloomberg’s governing philosophy is very clear: He is one of these “run it like a business” types, which means a focus on maximizing “growth” and “development” even if doing that requires mass layoffs and pushing poor people out of the city. (“Running like a business” does not actually mean efficient and careful; the Bloomberg years saw the largest contractor fraud scheme in the history of the city, with half a billion dollars in waste). His goal for New York was to market it as a product to the super-rich around the world, not to govern it in the interest of its working class. Unsurprisingly, this meant mass evictions, staggering rent increases, billion-dollar luxury “pencil” towers, “poor doors.” This is the New York of taxi driver suicides, homeless 11-year-olds, and beloved diners turned into Chase banks. And this is the America we could expect if Michael Bloomberg were to obtain the power he thirsts for.

...So, considering that he is a sexist oligarch who has spent his life undermining democratic values, why would any Democrat even consider voting for Michael Bloomberg? The case for him is that we should set aside all of the above, suspend every political principle and standard of morality we hold, for one simple reason: He is a “pragmatic” choice to take on Trump. The New York Times reported that some Democrats were being “drawn to Mr. Bloomberg because they believed his fortune would give Democrats the best chance to beat President Trump in the fall.” I must therefore attend briefly to this argument, because anyone who buys it will not be swayed by my catalog of Michael Bloomberg’s foul deeds.

Now, first, I am not even sure that given his record, it is self-evident that Bloomberg is better than Trump. He seems even more ruthlessly effective than Trump at using his money as a form of absolute power. Bloomberg might believe that climate change is real, which is a critically important difference, but he’s also revealed himself to be an aspiring dictator who will bribe elected officials into doing as he pleases.

But the idea of Bloomberg as an effective candidate against Trump is an error. It rests on the idea that to beat a rich asshole, we just need an even richer asshole, one who is kind of a mirror image of Trump. (Instead of Mar-a-Lago, Bloomberg has a giant gaudy house in Bermuda.) Unfortunately, Bloomberg is just Trump without charisma or a narrative, Trump but with a far more obvious contempt for poor people. (Trump would obviously bring a Big Gulp to every rally, taunting Bloomberg as he slurped it.) He has the worst bits of liberalism (nanny state mentality that wants to take away your guns and drinks) with all the ugliest bits of conservatism (rabidly pro-Wall Street mentality, warmongering).

Michael Bloomberg’s “electability” against Trump is one of the most dangerous illusions in politics. In fact, all his run would do is destroy the Democratic Party completely. Many in the party would see him as a wholly illegitimate nominee who had subverted democratic institutions and bought the election. They would be repulsed by his record. And they would hardly be interested in doing a single thing to help one horrible Republican billionaire oust another horrible Republican billionaire. Turnout would collapse, because the Democratic Party would be running someone who does not share the values of Democratic Party voters. Who would rally under the “Tax The Poor” banner? The guy who would fire you for playing a computer game at work or for having been a sex worker? Who is going to lift a finger to help this guy? Not only is he unelectable, he’s probably the least electable candidate in the entire field.

...Racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-union, pro-War on Drugs, hawkish, authoritarian, plutocratic, and in favor of taxing the poor: Michael Bloomberg offends every single “Democratic” value. I am sure he is attempting a rapid pivot at this very moment, hoping his hundreds of millions can bury his record and “rebrand” him as a moderate progressive. But there is no reason to believe a thing he says-- or a thing he pays people to say.

Bloomberg has shown a far more terrifying form of clientelism even than Donald Trump. If someone opposes him, he simply uses his money to overpower them. Because Bloomberg’s wealth is virtually infinite (even the billion dollars he will spend this year will not diminish his net worth at all, since it’s just the money his money makes), if a newspaper reporter tries to expose him, he can just buy the newspaper and shut them down. If a nonprofit group complains about him, he can just give them a pile of money to shut them up. The reason this is a kind of dictatorship is that people need money, so it’s very hard to turn it down when it’s offered. How can a struggling city turn down Michael Bloomberg’s checks? Yet if they take them, they have to do what he says. The Michael Bloomberg pitch is that because of his money, he is not beholden to anyone. But leaders should be beholden—only a dictator is beholden to no one. When Bloomberg says that nobody owns him, it’s because he owns you.

I have already seen people around me suddenly and mysteriously turn into Bloomberg supporters, and I sometimes feel like being in the Ionesco play Rhinoceros, in which people unexpectedly become rhinoceroses overnight. I have already spoken to people I never would have expected to see supporting Bloomberg, who have taken jobs with his campaign out of need. As Bloomberg bribes more and more people, I fear that resistance to him will break down, former critics suddenly going oddly quiet. It’s an alarming prospect.


 


The fact that Michael Bloomberg has more money than Donald Trump is actually a good reason not to let him anywhere near the presidency, because it would mean he would have a kind of absolute power to shape political policy-- if a legislator opposed him, he could easily give a hundred million dollars to their opponent. If someone tried to sue him, he could bring a hundred million dollar legal team against them. Do not think Michael Bloomberg would not do this, because this is exactly what Michael Bloomberg has been doing. He simply bought a change in the law when he wanted an illegal extra term, now that he’s out of office he wants to see the old term limits restored because it was a “one-time thing,” and of course he called the idea of extending terms for city council members an “absolute disgrace.” (rules are for everyone else). The entire theory of his presidential run is that you can just use money to buy power.

A Bloomberg nomination would signal the end of what’s left of our country’s democratic politics. The bitterness his nomination would cause among young people would be immeasurable. The thousands of people who knocked doors in the Iowa snow to try to push Bernie over the top would be enraged to see a billionaire skip the contest because he has too much money to need to bother. Many would probably give up permanently on electoral politics, convinced that our efforts don’t matter, because ultimately we live in a plutocracy. And they would not be wrong. Nominating Bloomberg would be one of the darkest days in the history of democracy.

Any Democrat supporting Bloomberg should be ashamed of themselves, and should be confronted with the serious question of how they can possibly support someone like this. If Michael Bloomberg offers you money, do not take it. If people you know speak positively about Michael Bloomberg, confront them with his record. Michael Bloomberg should not be discussed seriously as a Democratic presidential contender. He should be a laughingstock. He is a delusional man squandering hundreds of millions of dollars on an ego trip. We should be disgusted at his choice to fritter away money that could do so much good on trying to subvert the democratic process and seize more of what isn’t his. It is an outrage that someone who shares no democratic values can be made a contender merely because, as Michael Moore so eloquently put it recently, “he has a billion fucking dollars.” The case is closed.

Yesterday on Meet The Press, even fellow Austerity hawk, Status Quo Joe, hissed at Bloomberg that "$60 billion can buy you a lot of advertising, but it can’t erase your record." Of course that might prompt someone to inquire what will erase Biden's? It doesn't matter; it's too late now. You can stick a fork in ole Status Quo Joe. That lane belongs to the Oligarch; he bought it.