“I’m running for president to defeat Donald Trump and rebuild America. We cannot afford four more years of President Trump’s reckless and unethical actions. He represents an existential threat to our country and our values. If he wins another term in office, we may never recover from the damage.”
—-Former New York Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg, announcing his quixotic, last-minute candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination.
Observations:
- It was this quote that finally spurred me to compile the Seven Big Lies of “the resistance” into a single post today. Bloomberg’s lazy fear-mongering is allied to Big Lie #5: “Everything is Terrible.”
The main thing that is terrible to Democrats is that Donald Trump is President, and the main thing that is terrible to everyone else is that he has been harassed, interfered with, denigrated and prevented from doing what he was elected to do by three years of unethical efforts by the Democrats/ “the resistance”/ the mainstream news media alliance to remove him without an election.
- “Existential threat” is shameless hyperbole and unsupportable. Essentially what Bloomberg is saying is that resisting policies like open borders, globalism, restriction of First Amendment and Second Amendment rights, race-based benefits, elimination of due process protections for men accused of sexual misconduct, abortion without restrictions, confiscatory taxation, and extreme climate change measures threaten the nation’s survival, though it has thrived this long without any of those.
The statement is fact free, open- ended pandering to Trump-haters and radical Leftists.
- What “damage”? The main damage is from the continued assault on our institutions, comity and democracy created by the three year assault on the Presidency. How is Bloomberg going to distinguish himself from the lackluster field if he resorts to exaggerated Trump-bashing as his first point of attack?
If elected, Bloomberg would be the first Jewish President, the first President of the 20th Century who is shorter than 5’9″ (he’s 5’7, but adds an imaginary inch), and the least charismatic POTUS at least since Hoover. He’s 77, joining Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden as septuagenarians seeking to run against Donald Trump, who is 73. His candidacy, like that of Deal Patrick, is an indictment of the current Democratic field, which reveals a party that has failed in its duty to develop responsible American leaders.
Maybe the legal work Bloomberg paid for in 2014, when his law firm spend many billable hours dreaming up insulting domain names and registering them so no saboteurs couldn’t use them against him if he ran for President in 2016, will finally do him some good. Among the names registered—there are hundreds more:
- BloombergBlows.nyc
- BloombergMoron.nyc
- BloombergIsALoser.nyc
- BloombergIsAWeiner.nyc
- BloombergIsAnAss.nyc
- BloombergIsAnIdiot.nyc
- BloombergIsTooRich.nyc
- FuckBloomberg.nyc
- FuckMichaelBloomberg.nyc
- FuckMikeBloomberg.nyc
- MikeBloombergIsAShortJew.nyc
- ScrewMikeBloomberg.nyc
Ethics Alarms 
I’m actually surprised that Clinton hasn’t announced that she will run.
I’m serious. I actually think she’d have more of a shot at it than a whole lot of other people currently running, and what does she have to lose? Her winning record? There are enough people suffering from the delusion that she was a good candidate and the election was stolen by Russia that I think she’d at least make a solid primary candidate. Running against Biden, Warren and Mayor Pete? I think a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup could win.. As I’ve been saying for the last three years: All they have to do is show up and not be crazy. Clinton wasn’t crazy, so much as she was smug, awkward, corrupt and dishonest, and after a Trump administration, I don’t think we have much of a leg to stand on those issues.
HT, I used to think Hillary would run again, but I don’t any more. I think the Clintons have finally lost their power over the Democratic party. MeToo has neutered Bill as a asset and turned him into a raging liability. Weinstein can’t raise money for them. They can’t get money via their foundation. The party has swept way past them to the extreme left on policy. She’d have to reverse every policy of Bill’s tenure and even change how she ran in 2016. Plus, I think Clinton fatigue has finally set in among Democratic voters.
If anything, she’s banking on a brokered convention, which we haven’t seen since 1919. She’d be an obvious fall-back choice. She does not want to get on stage with Warren, and I suspect the party leaders who support het are telling her to wait it out. I would.
Am I thinking of a different kind of brokered convention? I was sure there was one Mid 1920’s due to the wet/dry prohibition splits, famous because there were over 100 ballots. And I thought that there was a race in the 50’s… Maybe Eisenhower? Where both the Democrats and Republicans had brokered conventions.
A brokered convention is one that goes many ballots, no one can show the necessary majority, so the party leaders get together and come up with a compromise candidate. Ike won on the first ballot. There was some horse trading, but that’s typical. Harding, Garfield, and Polk are Presidents who came out of brokered conventions–to some extent all conventions used to be brokered before primaries were given precedence. The 1924 Democratic National Convention, where the divisions between Wets and Drys on Prohibition (and other issues) led to 102 ballots of deadlock between frontrunners Alfred E. Smith and William G. McAdoo before dark horse John W. Davis was chosen as a compromise candidate on the 103rd ballot is the one you are referring to. I had forgotten about John Davis.
That worked out well.
My suspicion is that there’s something going on with Hillary’s health that’s preventing her from jumping in. I have no evidence to support that, it’s just a gut feeling I get from seeing her recent media appearances.
My take is that of all the presidential conteners all but one are running on a platform of some form of governmental restrictions on what acitizen or lawful resident is allowed to do.
I dare anyone to point to anything Trump has promised to ban cituzens and lawful residents from doing. Yes he is anti abortion but he has never demanded a litmus test for judical nominees on that issue. Moreover, he did not campaign on overturning Roe v Wade. He is also vehementally against cigarettes and alcohol but does not demand that government pass laws to ban these behaviors.
Bloomberg is a statist. He is the ultimate autocrat. Yes he made billions like Trump and is a savvy business person. He is not however, “Every man”. Bloomberg reminds me of Napolean or the statue of some Roman emperor. He effuses the coldness of marble as he looks through you.
Autocrat, thy name is Bloomberg.
His lawyers must have missed registering THAT one, Chris. Hah!
Personally, I get a huge kick out of “existential threat” being tossed around like somebody in a freshman dorm trying to impress his new room mates. Somebody writing Democratic part talking points must have been pissed off about having to read Camus and Sartre and Ionesco, et al.
I simply do not understand how Bloomberg thinks he will overcome the crippling conflicts of interest that owning a media empire while running for and potentially serving as president entails.
If he gets the nomination, it is a tacit admission that any criticism of Trumps conflicts were “insincere” (to put it mildly).
If the Saudi Prince does an interview on Bloomberg news, would that count as an impeachment emolument?
You know, I should have mentioned that; several sources have. Bloomberg’s “emoluments” problems wouldn’t be like Trump’s since he’s not in the hotel biz, but still, you’re right. It’s moot, of course; he has about the same chance as Andrew Yang.
Conspiracy theorists [citation needed] are saying Bloomberg is in the race so he can buy unlimited anti-Trump messages in media through a self-funded primary campaign. Not that I give credence to these things, but given the current state of the Democratic party it sounds plausible.
I believe this is why Tom Steyer is also in the race. It’s basically a way to spend tons of your own money to broadcast a message without all that pesky FEC oversight into your individual contributions to a candidate.
It will be interesting to see what happens when both drop out…what will happen to the millions they have in their campaign coffers? Are they allowed, as campaigns, to just dole out that money to any candidate as they choose? I admit to being no expert, but I smell something fishy…
On the same day Bloomberg News stated because it will not investigate “Mike” they will not investigate any Democratic candidate they publish their guude to the Trump impeachment. Sounds like a major campaign finance violation. Where are the prosecuters of the SDNY?
I guess they are too busy with Lev Parnas’ indiscretions.
I saw that too, and think it should be a whole separate post for Jack. 90% of major media coverage of Trump is negative, and this just further confirms the lie of “independent”, unbiased journalism in this country.
In what way is this a campaign finance violation?
Michael
If Bloomberg uses the assets of various Bloomberg enterprises to give him only good coverage and his opponent (Trump) bad press then he must report the value of the time Bloomberg “inc” employees were paid as bought media. The contributions of Bloomberg enterprises are not Bloomberg’s personal resources and are subject to campaign finance laws for several reasons: LLP’s are partnerships and LLC’s are like most organizational structures separate entities. The enterprises could not deduct the salaries of all persons allocated to such poitical stories as campaign contributions are not tax deductible. Only a few stories would cost more than the limits allow. I saw it as a form of campaign funds laundered through his news organizations. Only because Bloomberg can exert control over his news organizations could this be considered something of value as all politicians buy media exposure and must pay for such ads. Trying to claim all positive Bloomberg stories is earned media would be farcical.