The principal takeaway from last night's Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas is that billionaire Mike Bloomberg is a dud, plain and simple. Bloomberg was eviscerated from the get-go by Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who rightly called attention to the close connection between Bloomberg and Trump in their predilection for atavistic misogyny. Bernie preceded Warren a few minutes earlier by blasting Bloomberg for overseeing many years of aggressive stop-and-frisk policing in New York City.
In responding, or, better yet, failing to respond, Bloomberg displayed a combination of patrician brittleness and spaced-out obliviousness. This isn't a candidate who will inspire voters.
The morning-after analysis is savage. Can Bloomberg recover and mount an effective Super Tuesday campaign? It's possible -- he'll get a chance to repair his performance with another debate in South Carolina -- but at this point he has lost the prestige press. Absent any real, organic support, it's going to be hard for Bloomberg to buy his way out of the hole that puts him in.
What became clear to me while watching last night's debate is that -- with the exception of the candidacies of Warren and Sanders -- the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination are all iterations of the old Obama/Clinton neoliberal status quo. Buttigieg is a gay, white, charismaless version of Barack Obama; Amy Klobuchar is a poor man's Hillary Clinton; Joe Biden was Obama's VP; and Mike Bloomberg is a country-club Republican who has carpetbagged his way into the Democratic Party because he doesn't stand a chance in the new MAGA GOP, and he couldn't win as a third-party contender.
What all these candidates seem not to understand is that the Obama neoliberal status quo was not popular; in fact, it was so unpopular it elected Trump. That's why none of the old Obama status quo candidates have a good shot at beating Trump in a general election.
Elizabeth Warren will get a bounce out of her performance last night, but I think it's too little, too late.
Assuming there's no brake on Bernie's building momentum, the final question that must be answered is to what lengths is the Democratic National Committee willing to go to torpedo the nomination of Bernie Sanders.
No comments:
Post a Comment