President Super-Spreader Does Nevada

Trump's hate rally in Henderson, Nevada Sunday night was another super-spreader event in a state struggling with a dangerous second spike. Yesterday, Nevada reported another 277 cases of COVID-19, bringing the state's total to 73,814, a terrible 23,964 cases per million Nevadans, the 11th worst in the country. The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Trump losing Nevada by 6 points-- Biden 46.5% to Trump 40.5%. Hillary-- having run up a big margin in Clark County (Las Vegas) and having won Washoe County (Reno) narrowly-- beat Trump in the Silver State 539,260 (47.9%) to 512,058 (45.5%).

Sunday night, Governor Sisolak (D) was not at the rally. He was on Twitter letting Nevadans know what a selfish and reckless move Trump's packed, largely maskless rally was.

NBC reported that there were thousands of people packed indoors and violating state pandemic laws. "Henderson authorities said in a statement late Sunday that officials warned the event organizer in writing and verbally that they must obey the governor's directives, which include not gathering in groups larger than 50 people, wearing face coverings and social distancing. In response to criticism the campaign received for holding the indoor rally, Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign 2020 communications director, said in a statement, 'If you can join tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets, gamble in a casino, or burn down small businesses in riots, you can gather peacefully under the 1st Amendment to hear from the president of the United States.' The president had also held a rally on Saturday on the tarmac of Nevada’s Minden-Tahoe Airport where most people were not wearing masks or practicing social distancing. Reacting to the rally Sunday night, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted that the president is 'deliberately killing people.' Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) tweeted Monday, "Trump is using his position of power to spread COVID-19. People died after his last indoor rally.'"

And not wasn't on Democrats who were outraged by COVID-Mary's rallies. NBC reported that "Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary to President George W. Bush, tweeted Monday, 'Indoor rallies are irresponsible. Covid-19 is real and this was a bad idea.' The anti-Trump group of Republicans called The Lincoln Project tweeted, 'Thinking about how Donald Trump knew that coronavirus was airborne and deadly, and still chose to have an indoor rally.'"

Former Jeb Bush Communications Director, Tim Miller, who now writes for the conservative Bulwark labeled the rally in Henderson reckless, atrocious and deceitful, noting that "the spittle was flying [and] so were the lies." He downgraded the event from super-spreader to mini-spreader because so few people turned out, noting it "was Trump’s first indoor rally since the Tulsa disaster that cost Brad Parscale his job and after which Herman Cain lost his life. This latest public-health monstrosity came on the heels of the president, at a separate maskless gathering earlier in the weekend, mocking his opponent Joe Biden for having followed responsible social-distancing protocols."

For those who have been beaten down by the Trumpian disaster porn, rallies such as this don’t really make a mark any longer. The cable networks and even the three C-SPANs landed on the BORRRRING side of the ledger: None of them chose to air the event. And for political junkies and Trump-watchers, these rallies increasingly have the feel of a boring nostalgia act with a lead singer halfheartedly crooning his old hits. And there’s something to be said for that.

But it is important to take a moment to shake yourself free from the blunting effect of the orange Trumpian film that has subsumed our daily lives (and here in northern California, our atmosphere). Seen with fresh eyes, the Henderson rally was truly a shocking and unimaginably wheels-off undertaking given that it came amid a pandemic that is still killing a thousand Americans a day and with wildfires making much of the West Coast uninhabitable.

And so over the course of the president’s interminable harangue, I began to jot down the moments that stood out, beginning with his foray into the insane #Obamagate conspiracy. As Trump began a side-bar about Obama supposedly being caught spying on him, he eyed an attendee who was beginning a “Lock Him Up” chant. He then egged on the overwhelmingly unmasked crowd into a frenzy in which they projected airborne spittle throughout the building in an attempt to will to life the fantasy that their wannabe strongman president might jail his predecessor, the first black president, for an imaginary crime.

This was not the only coronavirus projectile laden with racial invective emitted by the attendees. Following the removal of a protester-- presumably a Black Lives Matter activist, although it wasn’t clear from the video-- the crowd began bellowing that oh-so-clever parlay: All Lives Matter. All Lives Matter.

(At this point it should be noted that the CDC recommends a good way to lessen your coronavirus risk is to avoid gatherings with singing or shouting. If you are going to be in such a location, they recommend a mask.)

In addition to basking in the two racist chants, the president said that his opponent is a Communist (“c-word”) who would eliminate the suburbs and allow anarchists to burn down Hispanic businesses. He fabricated a charge about the Democratic governor of Nevada tampering with ballots, declared that football is “boring as hell,” made fun of Chris Cuomo’s ratings, “joked” about running for a third term, and said flag burners should go to jail for one year. He shouted “I love the Hispanics,” lied about what was said at the DNC, reintroduced the bigoted dog-whistle use of and exaggerated emphasis on the middle name of Barack Hussein Obama (which he had told Bob Woodward he only does in private), said that NASA was almost closed before he got into office and had grass growing on the runways (?), and he once again implied support for extrajudicial killings by U.S. marshals. The only time he acknowledged that his campaign event was running afoul of state regs was when he ambiguously implied that he would help attendees if the governor comes after them. He never recommended that the attendees take any health precautions, despite the advance team building in a nice six-foot bubble between him and his fans.

...Everything about it was fucking appalling.

In fact it was so appalling that it would stand out as the single most appalling and reckless political event hosted by any presidential nominee in my lifetime before yesterday by a long shot, if you just didn’t count anything else that Donald Trump did.

And that’s the problem. Somewhere along the way he removed many people’s ability to be appalled. We have become numbed. Too many regional news outlets either won’t cover the event at all or will have headlines like “Donald Trump Makes Appeal to Hispanics At Nevada Rally.” The national Democrats will let Gov. Sisolak get in his licks, but otherwise move onto something else.

Just because we have become immune to his behavior doesn’t mean it should be treated as if it is one side of a two-sided coin. Just because he lies so cavalierly doesn’t mean he should be allowed to get away with it. Just because his oh-so-unsubtle race-baiting is part and parcel of his presidency doesn’t mean we should just let All Lives Matter chants pass by the wayside. Just because we have become bored by our #takes and have run out of new and clever angles for analyzing our malign president doesn’t mean we should say nothing at all.

All the president’s grotesqueries matter. This is just the latest.

Amanda Carpenter is another #NeverTrump Republican-- former communications director for Ted Cruz and speechwriter for neo-Nazi Jim DeMint-- and she was more interested in obsessing over how so many Republican elites are abandoning Trump. Her Bulwark column Monday was all about "the breaking points for these various White House staffers, cabinet secretaries, political advisers, and others-- the moment when each decided he or she just couldn’t stick with Trump anymore. Because we can learn a lot about Trump and the overall effect he is having on our country by studying what made these individuals-- from revered military leaders to Trump’s sleazy surrogates-- finally snap." Let's look at one example-- "Mad Dog."

Of the men and women who have served Trump and gone on to publicly speak against him, perhaps no one’s words carry more weight than Trump’s former defense secretary James Mattis. Theoretically, the “warrior monk” General “Mad Dog” Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, who once led Central Command, should have been a good fit inside the Trump administration.

But Trump is a reckless force that not even a military general with 40 years experience could counsel. Mattis walked out on Trump in December 2018 when the president ignored his advice and abruptly pulled troops out of the Middle East. Mattis is quoted in Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, as saying, “When I was basically directed to do something that I thought went beyond stupid to felony stupid, strategically jeopardizing our place in the world and everything else, that’s when I quit.”

That’s not the only deep disagreement he’s had with the president, though. When Trump used military force to disperse protesters in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square, Mattis took the rare step of issuing a public statement on the matter, putting it in no uncertain terms that Trump has crossed an intolerable line.

Mattis said he was “angry and appalled” at the president’s actions, and “We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society.” He went on, “We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.” Then he called for the adoption of a “new path” that could only be interpreted as one leading away from Trump.

Carpenter concluded by noting that "Trump pushes people to take unethical, dangerous, and even criminal actions for his benefit. That’s just who Trump is. He tries to corrupt those around him. This is why-- in addition to the desire to sell books-- so many people have been coming out in recent weeks to explain their disenchantment with Trump. They know that if he gets a second term, he will keep corrupting America, too."

Why Are Republicans So Afraid Of Vote By Mail

There hasn't been any public polling from Nevada available lately. The last one I found was a Fox poll in January that showed Trump down by 8 points (47-39%). Unless Nevada is entirely in its own universe, that chasm is much wider now. In 2016, Hillary beat Trump 539,260 (47.92) to 512,058 (46.50%), kind of close. However, since Trump was inaugurated, had already decreased by 21 points in February, 54% disapproving and 43% approving. Since then, 51,199 Nevadans have contracted COVID (994 more yesterday) and 847 have died (12 more yesterday). There are 16,622 cases per million Nevadans and that is very high-- and rapidly increasing. The idea of Nevada being won by Trump-- or even being as close as it was in 2016-- is preposterous.

The non-Sheldon Adelson Adelson-owned paper, the Las Vegas Sun published a piece yesterday reporting that on Monday morning Trump claimed-- via tweet-- that Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak and the legislature, controlled by Democrats, are "using COVID to steal the state" election, a day after the Senate passed a bill that had already passed the Assembly, requiring all Nevada voters to receive mail-in ballots-- even Republican and neo-Nazi Trump supporters. No Republicans passed the bill in either chamber.

More people voting scares the crap out of Trump and out of conservatives and Republicans in general. Trump says that a big vote by mail turnout all make "it impossible for Republicans to win the state." Maybe he and the Republicans should do something that makes voters want to support them.

On Monday morning, Josh Dawsey and Amy Gardner reported for the Washington Post that "Trump’s unfounded attacks on mail balloting are discouraging his own supporters from embracing the practice, according to polls and Republican leaders across the country, prompting growing alarm that one of the central strategies of his campaign is threatening GOP prospects in November. Multiple public surveys show a growing divide between Democrats and Republicans about the security of voting by mail, with Republicans saying they are far less likely to trust it in November. In addition, party leaders in several states said they are encountering resistance among GOP voters who are being encouraged to vote absentee while also seeing the president describe mail voting as 'rigged' and 'fraudulent.' As a result, state and local Republicans across the country fear they are falling dramatically behind in a practice that is expected to be key to voter turnout this year. Through mailers and Facebook ads, they are racing to promote absentee balloting among their own."

Pity. Requests for absentee ballots from Democrats are outpacing requests from Republicans by huge numbers-- even in red states but especially in swing states like North Carolina. Maybe Trump's animosity has something to with him being too stupid to figure out where or how to vote (2004)... except by mail:





Paul Constant, writing Sunday for Business Insider, noted that "When it comes to risk of coronavirus infection, vote-by-mail is the safest available option. If you can walk to your mailbox and back twice without encountering unmasked strangers, your entire voting experience is virtually guaranteed to be COVID-free. It's also easy, trackable, and transparent... So why wouldn't every state adopt a vote-by-mail system this year?"

Zach Silk, president of Civic Ventures was definitive about the problem: "First and foremost, let's be very clear that this is a problem perpetrated by one particular party, which is really the Senate Republicans."

For months, Trump has cast doubt on the reliability of mail-in ballots, presumably in an effort to throw the legitimacy of a potential Biden win into question. But "as much as Trump wants to make vote-by-mail a partisan issue, in most of the country it's not a partisan issue," Silk adds. Several red states, including Utah, have robust vote-by-mail systems, he explains, and he points out that the two demographics that have traditionally embraced voting by mail, "old people and the military, are two very strong Republican voting blocs. This shouldn't be partisan. We should be able to figure this out."

In fact, Silk says, some states are in the process of establishing safe voting systems right now. "Ohio is doing interesting things [to promote voting by mail], and Iowa is going to mail applications to everyone in the state" to encourage mail-in ballots.

Silk, a veteran campaign manager and political strategist, admits that Republican interference in elections is "the one thing that keeps me up at night about this election, the one that makes me the most nervous-- the inability of people to participate."

Uribe agrees that "we should enfranchise as many people as possible and make it as safe as possible for everyone" to vote, but she adds that "vote-by-mail is also not a panacea for this election."

...[V]ote-by-mail is by far the most reliable voting system, and it's worked in both blue and red states. But no system is entirely secure. Without serious, nonpartisan oversight, it's possible for Republicans to disenfranchise young people and people of color from voting by mail. Ballots from Republican strongholds with high densities of traditionally Democratic-voting populations, for example, are likely to see more signature challenges and larger rejection rates.

And Trump's continual assault on the system means that the American people will have to be especially vigilant against vote-tampering this year. Some experts believe that if partisan saboteurs were to commit an all-out assault on vote-by-mail results, "we can lose up to a five-percent election margin based on rejection rates of certain ballots-- and that five percent is something we can't afford to lose," Uribe said. That's why she believes that we need a more diverse selection of volunteer poll workers, as a safeguard against disenfranchisement.

It's easy to fall into the lazy trap of believing that voting is a once-a-year, or even a once-every-four-years, responsibility. But civic engagement demands more from us-- particularly in a time when democratic institutions are under attack.

"If you're looking to take near-term action" to promote voting by mail, Silk said, "you should be reaching out to your lawmakers-- especially if you have a Republican Senator in your state-- to communicate with them how crucial it is to protect the vote."

In other words, if you want your voice to be heard in November, you've also got to use your voice right now.

Tuesday Late Night Bonus Track: Nevada has no Senate race this year; but Maine sure does. And you know exactly who Trump wants to see win, right? Cauvin did a great job for the Lincoln Project on this one:

The Establishment's Stop Bernie Movement Isn't Resonating With Democratic Voters

Reminder-- and this isn't just about Republicans vs Democrats

Bernie's political revolution IS resonating. Economic royalism isn't. Even the Washington Post, economic royalism's biggest cheerleader among newspapers, was forced to admit after the way Bernie's revolution crushed the status quo conservatives in Nevada yesterday that Bernie won "in nearly every demographic group, allowing him to set down a marker in the first state with a significant share of nonwhite voters. Sanders expanded the electorate by attracting relatively large numbers of first-time caucus-goers, providing momentum as the race shifts into a critical stretch over the next 10 days. He prevailed among those with college degrees and those without; those living in union and nonunion households; and in every age group except those over 65. He won more than half of Hispanic caucus-goers-- almost four times as much support as his nearest rival, former vice president Joe Biden-- and even narrowly prevailed among those who identified as moderate or conservative. Despite attacks on his health proposal by the powerful Culinary Union, he won in caucus sites filled with union members."

It's almost like Democratic grassroots voters are abandoning their tainted and corrupt leadership. About time! Early this morning the the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Elections Research Center released a new poll showing Bernie winning in Michigan primary (just as he had in 2016), the Pennsylvania primary and the Wisconsin primary.

Remember, Biden pretends delegate-rich Pennsylvania is his home state instead of tiny Delaware where he lived and based his entire career. Bernie is even beating him there! The primary is April 28.

• Bernie- 25%
• Status Quo Joe- 20%
• Bloomberg- 19%
• Mayo Pete- 12%
• Elizabeth- 9%
• Klobuchar- 5%

Wisconsin is Bernie country again, of course. It was a big state for him in 2016 and looks like it will be an even bigger state for him in 2020. The primary is April 7.

• Bernie- 30%
• Status Quo Joe- 13%
• Bloomberg- 13%
• Elizabeth- 12%
• Mayo Pete- 12%
• Klobuchar- 9%

By the way, that poll also shows Bernie beating Trump in head-to-head match-ups in each of the crucial battleground states that Hillary and the Democratic establishment managed to lose in 2016:

• Michigan- 48 to 41%
• Pennsylvania- 47 to 45%
• Wisconsin- 46 to 44%

Ryan Lizza, writing for Politico this morning, was definitive: Sanders eviscerates the conventional wisdom about why he can't win. Lizza is no revolutionary but even he had to admit that Nevada exposed the opposition to Bernie "as weak, divided, and grasping at increasingly tenuous arguments about their viability." But his main point-- and his most important one-- is that Bernie "laid waste not just to his five main rivals but also to every shard of conventional wisdom about the Democratic presidential primaries." And it wasn't just the anti-working class media establishment that fell; it was also the anti-working class Democratic establishment that got flushed down the toilet. The leaders of powerful Culinary Union, went to war against Bernie over Medicare for All and were tasked by state party boss and anti-Bernie fanatic Harry Reid and by the DNC with weakening him. But the union's grassroots went with Bernie not their overseers. He won 34% of caucus-goers from union households, beating pretend union-supporter Status Quo Joe and all of his other rivals.

Lizza explained how Bernie's campaign "exploded a lot of myths," basically the bullshit the anti-working class pundits and Democratic establishment has been floating about his campaign to derail it. If you watch MSNBC, you can probably repeat all of them with ease.

He was said to have a ceiling of 30% or so. Remarkably, against a much larger field of candidates Sanders is poised to come close to the same level of support as he did in 2016 in a one-on-one race against Hillary Clinton, to whom he lost 47%-53%. (He was at 46% with a quarter of precincts reporting as of this writing.) He was said to be unable to attract anyone outside his core base. But he held his own with moderate voters (22%) and won across every issue area except voters who cared most about foreign policy, who went with Biden.

All of this makes the results of the Nevada caucuses, which in the past have not been treated with the same importance as the contests in the three other early states-- Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina-- matter more this year. They have helped settle lingering questions about Sanders' appeal.

Pete 3 by Nancy Ohanian

The momentum of Buttigieg, who was Sanders' strongest opponent in Iowa and New Hampshire, stalled out in Nevada. He slipped into third place, well behind Biden. Long-shot candidacies need to continue to surge forward with unexpected results to overcome doubts. But Buttigieg’s success in Iowa and New Hampshire was not enough to change the minds of enough people in Nevada. A victory here for him would have been catalytic, but the Sanders blowout has halted his rise. (He is still likely to be second behind Sanders in the delegate race, but the early states are all about momentum, not delegates.)

Let's wrap this up with two narrative versions of relevant Twitter threads from this morning, one from former insurance industry executive Wendell Potter and one from The Times' Paul Krugman. Potter first:

Tonight’s results in Nevada confirm something momentous that would have shocked me when I worked as a health insurance executive: Medicare for All is hugely popular & the winning position for Democrats. Between Iowa, New Hampshire and now Nevada, this is a fact. Here’s why:

Entrance polls out of Nevada show 6 in 10 want a single-payer system. Entrance and exit polls from Iowa & New Hampshire found 6 in 10 voters in both states support Medicare for All. All this after millions were spent by my old industry trying to scare voters away from it.

In Nevada, two top candidates, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, both put deceptive ads on the air attacking Medicare for All. They campaigned explicitly against Medicare for All. And they lost by 30 points.

With these three state results in, we now see that Medicare for All is popular in the Midwest, Northeast, and the West, all with different, diverse populations. Medicare for All can win anywhere-- as the primary's front-running campaign demonstrates.

We know the health insurance industry and its lobbyists won’t quit trying to scare the public. But politicians who parrot their talking points do so at their own peril. It's now clear: Medicare For All is the winning position in the 2020 Democratic primary. And opposing it is not.

And Krugman, the NY Times centrist economist who has been an opponent to much of Bernie's platform for years and who still opposes him but is willing to make the case for Bernie in the general election against Trump, unlike many of our MSNBC "friends," who-- largely to protect their tax breaks-- prefer Trump over Bernie:

Well, Bernie Sanders is now the clear favorite for the Democratic nomination. Lots of things to say about that, but the most important is that he is NOT a left-leaning version of Trump. Even if you disagree with his ideas, he's not a wannabe authoritarian ruler.

America under a Sanders presidency would still be America, both because Sanders is an infinitely better man than Trump and because the Democratic Party wouldn't enable abuse of power the way Republicans have.

And if you're worried about his economic agenda, what's your concern, exactly? That he'll run budget deficits? Trump is doing that already-- and the economic effects have been positive.

I'm more concerned about (a) electability and (b) if he does win, squandering political capital on unwinnable fights like abolishing private health insurance. But if he's the nominee, it's the job of Dems to make him electable if at all possible.

To be honest, a Sanders administration would probably leave center-left policy wonks like me out in the cold, at least initially. But this is no time for self-indulgence and ego trips. Freedom is on the line.

Marianne Williamson has gotten to know-- and generally like-- all the candidates running for president. Once she suspended her campaign, all the remaining candidates have reached out to her for her endorsement. She has a tendency to see what's good about each one-- and she was busy working on helping congressional candidates with platforms akin to her own... but this afternoon, she made her decision. Marianne Williamson is definitely feeling the Bern and has endorsed Bernie's campaign for the presidency!

Late Night Horserace

The Oligarch and The Gangsta

The new Latino Decisions polling released yesterday, like all polling recently, shows Bernie way ahead-- nothingnesses nationally and specifically in Nevada. The first number shows the preference nationally among Hispanics who identify as Democrats and the second number is only for the same cohort in the state of Nevada where candidates have been actively campaigning.

• Bernie- 30% nationally, 33% in Nevada
• Status Quo Joe- 21% nationally, 22% in Nevada
• Mini-Mike- 18% nationally, 6% in Nevada
• Elizabeth- 10% nationally, 6% in Nevada
• Mayo Pete- 5% nationally, 8% in Nevada
• Klobuchar- 2% nationally, 1% in Nevada
• Steyer- 1% nationally, 12% in Nevada

They also did head-to-head matchups against Trump, asking who Nevada participants (a plurality of whom consider themselves independents) would vote for if the election were between Trump and each of the specific Democrats:

• For Bernie- 80-16% in Nevada
• For Mini-Mike- 78-15% in Nevada
• For Status Quo Joe- 72-19% in Nevada
• For Mayo Pedro- 68-17% in Nevada
• For Elizabeth- 63-21% in Nevada
• For Klobuchar- 57-24% in Nevada

The Bloomberg campaign-- and the anti-working class media, led by MSNBC-- are running around screaming that it will soon be too late to stop Bernie and then horrible people like Chris Matthews, Rahm Emanuel, Joy Reid, Claire McCaskill, Mimi "The Skin Crawl Lady" Rocah, Chuck Todd, Donnie Deutsch, Jason Johnson and all the #NeverTrump Republicans will have to decide between voting for Bernie or Trump in November. Hahahahahaha/ They do it to the rest of us all the time. Now they deserve it. Bloomberg insists that unless Mayo Pete, Klobuchar and Status Quo Joe meld their now pointless campaigns into his, Bernie is going to amass an insurmountable delegate lead and be unstoppable. Poor Max Boot! Poor Charlie Sykes! Kevin Sheekey, one of the top Mini-Mike strategists was running around rending his garments: "I don’t think many people understand the dire circumstances here... The fact is if the state of this race remains status quo-- with Biden, Pete and Amy in the race on Super Tuesday-- Bernie is likely to open up a delegate lead that seems nearly impossible to overcome." The Bloomberg lifelong war against the working class-- same as Trump's-- has now led him to demand that Status Quo Joe, Klobuchar and Mayo Pete all get out of the race before Super Tuesday.





Cheeky, huh? But not as cheeky as poaching their staffers, fundraisers, donors and supporters. CNBC reported that Bloomie has persuaded top Status Quo Joe bundlers-- mostly the scummiest corruptionists in Democratic politics-- to jump ship. He doesn't even necessarily want their money, just that they cut off Biden and the other candidates.

Several financial executives who have been helping Biden have also started to meet with and reach out to the Bloomberg campaign to get a feel for the operation.

“Bloomberg is running a great campaign, hiring incredible people and building an impressive field operation across the country,” said a Wall Street Biden supporter who recently met with Bloomberg but declined to be named. “Also spending essentially unlimited money and we’re seeing all of that result in an impressive increase in the polls.”

Another investor noted that Biden’s backers are preparing to move toward Bloomberg if the former vice president doesn’t score a dominant win in the Feb. 29 South Carolina primary. Biden has been the polling leader in the state for much of the campaign, and his organization has projected confidence in his strength there. The candidate left New Hampshire early the day of the primary to rally in South Carolina.

“I think everyone will move over after South Carolina,” this lead Biden fundraiser said.

Yeah... "everyone," like in everyone who hates the working class but somehow thinks the Democratic Party belongs to them.

Lots of opportunities for Bernie here!

Philip Bump explained to Washington Post readers how Bernie can mathematically wrap this whole thing up on March 3, despite Bloomberg's billions. There's a 15% threshold candidates need to pass statewide in order to get any votes at all. And that's bad news for candidates who are falling below that level. Let's take the two early states that are left, Nevada and South Carolina and then look at the Super-Tuesday states which have been polled since January 1. I'm only including candidates at 15% and above:

Nevada

• Bernie- 26.8%
• Biden- 15.1%

South Carolina

• Bernie- 23%
• Status Quo Joe- 23%
• Steyer- 20%
• Mayo Pete- 15%

Now let's look at the Super-Tuesday states. Remember, Bloomberg has spent tens of millions of dollars advertising in all these states while most of the other candidates either haven't advertised at all or are just starting this week.

Arkansas- 36 delegates

• Bloomberg- 19.6%
• Status Quo Joe- 18.5%
• Bernie- 16.4%
• Mayo Pete- 15.5%

California- 494 delegates

• Bernie- 28.7%
• Bloomberg- 16.0%

Maine- 32 delegates

• Bernie- 23.9%
• Bloomberg- 15.6%
• Mayo Pete- 15.3%

Massachusetts- 114 delegates

• Bernie- 19.7%
• Elizabeth- 18.2%

North Carolina- 122 delegates

• Bernie- 22.0%
• Bloomberg- 20.1%
• Status Quo Joe- 19.1%

Oklahoma- 42 delegates

• Bloomberg- 18%
• Bernie- 17%

Texas- 261 delegates

• Bernie- 24.1%
• Bloomberg- 20.0%
• Status Quo Joe- 17.9%

Utah- 35 delegates

• Bernie- 35%
• Elizabeth- 19%
• Status Quo Joe- 16%

Vermont- 24 delegates

• Bernie- 51%

Virgina- 124 delegates

• Bernie- 22.4%
• Bloomberg- 22.3%
• Status Quo Joe-19.1%

So, where, for example, is Colorado? No 2020 polling. Same with Tennessee, Minnesota and Alabama. Bernie's going to get delegates in every single state. No one else is. I suspect that on March 3 and 4th we're going to get a lot of "suspending my campaign" messages. So what's the message here? Oh, that's easy... just look at the numbers: the fucking oligarch is perverting democracy itself, just as Trump has. We have to stop him. Stop Bloomberg and Trump, not Bernie.

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.