The Rationale of Bloomberg's Quest for the Presidency

Billionaire Republican Mike Bloomberg kicked off his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination on Monday in Norfolk, Virginia. There were no cheering crowds. Only a few handshakes in a diner followed by a soporific address to a mustered corporate media in a nearby hotel ballroom.

As Alexander Burns describes in "At First 2020 Campaign Stop, Bloomberg Boasts What His Money Can Do":

Michael R. Bloomberg started his campaign at a hushed diner in downtown Norfolk, Va., shaking hands with a snowy-haired afternoon crowd, drawing a combination of selfie requests and quizzical stares, before strolling to a nearby hotel ballroom and making an efficient statement before a bank of television cameras.

Accompanied by a small platoon of aides, including two of his former deputy mayors from New York City and a security team that flitted around a downtown waterfront nearly barren of pedestrians, Mr. Bloomberg described himself as a political pragmatist skilled at wielding his wealth to win elections.

“I know how to win,” Mr. Bloomberg, the former three-term mayor of New York City, said, “because I’ve done it time and time again.”

If Mr. Bloomberg’s first in-person appearance as a presidential candidate lacked something in organic political energy, he has already jolted the race through the sheer scale of his political spending, stunning the Democratic political establishment and stirring an outcry from the party’s populist wing. He is airing nearly $1 million in television ads in Virginia alone this week, as part of nearly $35 million in television advertising nationwide. A few bystanders said they had already seen those ads.

My thought after reading about Bloomberg's artificial Norfolk campaign kickoff is that a better site for the event would have been New York City's largest prison complex, Rikers Island. That, after all, is Bloomberg's appeal. He is our warden, our billionaire jailer. He could have repeated his apology for stop and frisk to the assembled prisoners. Rikers is slated for closing by 2026. Maybe that's what a Bloomberg candidacy augurs for the United States.

Already stories are appearing in the press documenting Bloomberg's generous support of Republicans. This will prove hard to swallow for voters presently aligned with Biden and Buttigieg, voters Bloomberg will positively have to win over if he hopes to win the nomination.

And, if they needed any more grist for their mill, there will be reminders to progressives that as mayor Bloomberg broke down the main Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park.

So at this point the safe wager is that Bloomberg's campaign is going to crash and burn spectacularly. My concern is that Bloomberg sees something we don't, knows something we can't. There's got to be a reason a guy worth $54 billion is launching a kamikaze attack. On the surface it makes no sense.

I think the answer is one I've mentioned before. Fear of Bernie. Warren, at this point, is showing evidence of a glass jaw. Biden continues to lead the field but he's not raising money. There's only one candidate who has a truly nationwide campaign apparatus and a funding mechanism that guarantees his competitiveness not to mention a lot of down-ballot support in the form of Justice Democrats running for the House of Representatives. That's Bernie Sanders.

Mike Bloomberg is a true warrior for his class. His candidacy is about one thing, blocking Bernie. The hubris of the 1% of the 1% is that Bloomberg will end up aiding Bernie rather than blocking him.