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.

There's a Connection between Kshama Sawant and Michael Bloomberg: the Growing Panic of the Super-Rich

I learned about both yesterday late in the afternoon: Kshama Sawant's wonderful reversal of fortune in Seattle City Council District Three and Michael Bloomberg's announcement that he was entering the Democratic Primary despite a declaration earlier in the year that he was sitting it out.

On Wednesday when I made the argument to coworkers that Kshama's apparent defeat in a city council district spells trouble for a progressive presidential nominee, someone like a Sanders or a Warren, heading the Democratic ticket I was greeted with quizzical looks. Remember the Tip O'Neill line, "All politics is local." If a popular progressive incumbent with broad support (look at her endorsements!) can be knocked off by concentrated corporate cash, there's little doubt that it can be replicated nationally.

It's still early. There are two more ballot drops today, but, as Rich Smith wrote yesterday,

Sawant needed 58% of the vote today to stay alive, and she got just over 59%. Later ballots lean left, and if she repeats this performance in tomorrow's ballot drop, she'll keep her seat.

Bloomberg's promise of a presidential run reaches the front pages of the mainstream media every four years. The reason is always the same: Bloomberg, as the defender of U.S. oligarchy, feels the electorate veering too far to the left and hence in need of a little oligarchic discipline.

The chutzpah of the super-rich is amazing. Bloomberg has about as much chance of winning the Democratic Primary as any of the other neoliberal also-rans already on the dung heap -- Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, et al.

According to Alexander Burns,

Mr. Bloomberg, 77, initially bowed out of the 2020 race because of Mr. Biden’s apparent strength, but he has since grown skeptical that Mr. Biden is on track to win the Democratic nomination and he does not see the two leading liberals in the race, Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as strong candidates for the general election. [It's actually the reverse: Bloomberg sees a strong possibility that Warren or Sanders might end up in the White House.]

But Mr. Bloomberg would face a difficult path in a Democratic primary largely defined so far by debates about economic inequality. His presence in the race would offer fodder to the party’s rising populist wing, led by Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders, who contend that the extremely rich already wield far too much influence in politics. He is a former Republican who registered as a Democrat ahead of the midterm elections last year. And his mayoral record, including his support for stop-and-frisk policing and his championing of charter schools, has the potential to alienate pillars of the Democratic Party’s political base.

Ms. Warren, who has sparred from afar with Mr. Bloomberg over her proposals to tax the extremely rich, issued a blistering fund-raising message calling his potential candidacy “another example of the wealthy wanting our government and economy to only work for themselves.” Campaigning in North Carolina on Thursday evening, Ms. Warren offered a restrained comment on Mr. Bloomberg and cast her candidacy as a “grass roots movement.”

“It’s not enough just to have somebody come in, anybody, and say they’re going to buy this election,” she said.

Faiz Shakir, Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager, signaled the stiff resistance Mr. Bloomberg would face if he joined the race.

“More billionaires seeking more political power surely isn’t the change America needs,” Mr. Shakir said in an email.

Howard Wolfson, a close adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, said on Thursday that the former mayor has grown uneasy about the existing trajectory of the Democratic primary. He said Mr. Bloomberg viewed President Trump as an “unprecedented threat to our nation,” and noted the Democrat’s heavy spending in the 2018 midterm elections and this week’s off-year races in Virginia.

One thing is for sure. The rich are getting scared. If Kshama Sawant can overcome a tidal wave of corporate cash, it's good news for Warren, for Bernie, for all of us, and will foretell a rough road for Mike Bloomberg's candidacy.

Bloomberg, BDS and Biden

The news is neither good nor bad: Michael Bloomberg announced on Tuesday that he would not be running for president. After an extensive examination of his chances for victory, Bloomberg concluded his money would best be spent on launching a new initiative:

Beyond Carbon: a grassroots effort to begin moving America as quickly as possible away from oil and gas and toward a 100 percent clean energy economy.

At the heart of Beyond Carbon is the conviction that, as the science has made clear, every year matters. The idea of a Green New Deal — first suggested by the columnist Tom Friedman more than a decade ago — stands no chance of passage in the Senate over the next two years. But Mother Nature does not wait on our political calendar, and neither can we.

Speaking of Tom Friedman, his latest column "Ilhan Omar, Aipac and Me," is vintage Friedman. He defends the failed status quo -- in this case, the prohibition on criticism of Israel -- by marshaling arguments from the anti-establishment left.

Friedman grants that AIPAC is a blight, and chides its joined-at-the-hip alliance with the GOP, but he takes Ilham Omar's non-committal equivocations on BDS as proof that she hankers for the destruction of the Israeli state. I kid you not.

Here's Friedman's best shot, such as it is, at Omar:

When I see that dual-loyalty charge coming from a congresswoman who first signaled opposition to B.D.S. and then support for it, when I see it coming from a congresswoman who has never been to Israel, when I see it coming from a congresswoman who, to my knowledge, has never criticized the Palestinian leadership for its corruption and failure — time and again — to seize on peace overtures from Israeli leaders who, unlike Netanyahu, actually wanted to forge a two-state solution, when I see it coming from a congresswoman who seems to be obsessed with Israel’s misdeeds as the biggest problem in the Middle East — not Iran’s effective occupation of four Arab capitals, its support for ethnic cleansing and the use of poison gas in Syria and its crushing of Lebanese democracy — it makes me suspicious of her motives.

Basically it is the same old same old: corrupt Palestinian leadership (corrupted by who?); an Iranian bogeyman (a very tough sell); and Syrian poison gas (whose poison gas?).

But back to Bloomberg's latest aborted presidential run. The New York Times story made the argument that Bloomberg's path to the White House was a long shot, but it becomes well-nigh impossible with Biden in the race.

That leads one to believe that Biden is coming in (because, remember, Bloomberg waited until after Hillary's Super Tuesday 2016 romp before announcing that he would not pursue the presidency). All indications are that Biden will join the race soon. But why hasn't he announced already? Could it be he wants Andrew Cockburn's devastating Harper's cover story "No Joe!" off the newsstands before he tosses his hat in the ring.

Biden 2020 will be a version of Hillary 2016, with the DNC mucking about and a neo-McCarthyite song so shrill voters will a large supply of wax to plug up their ears.

Bloomberg. Again.

A strong indication that the big-money donors who fund the Democratic Party are worried about the leftward drift of its rank'n'file is the news that billionaire Michael Bloomberg is talking up a presidential run as a Democrat. According to "Bloomberg May Run for President as a Democrat. His Views on Policing and #MeToo Could Be a Problem.," by Alexander Burns and Sydney Embers,

Mr. Bloomberg has mapped an energetic travel schedule for the midterms that will also take him to battleground states that would be crucial in a presidential race. He will make stops in Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania and address influential liberal groups, including the League of Conservation Voters and Emily’s List, aides said. And he is weighing a visit to the early primary state of South Carolina.

Mr. Bloomberg is also preparing to reissue a revised edition of his autobiography, “Bloomberg by Bloomberg,” aides confirmed.

Democratic leaders have so far embraced Mr. Bloomberg, giving him a regal reception aimed at ushering him securely into the party. At a climate conference in San Francisco, he stood beside Gov. Jerry Brown of California, a popular Democrat, to show support for the Paris climate agreement. And in an embrace laden with political symbolism, Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, introduced Mr. Bloomberg at two events as a herculean champion of the environment and a master of business and government.

“His name is synonymous with excellence,” Ms. Pelosi said, at a dinner atop the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “And he knows how to get the job done.”

In a private conversation at the dinner, Mr. Bloomberg pressed Ms. Pelosi to govern the House in a bipartisan way if Democrats take power, he said — a message he also trumpeted publicly in Las Vegas as he pleaded with Democrats to pursue the center. “Candidates who listen to voters in the middle are more likely to reach across the aisle and to get things done,” Mr. Bloomberg argued there.

[snip]

There is considerable skepticism among Democratic leaders, and even some of Mr. Bloomberg’s close allies, that he will actually pursue the presidency, because he has entertained the idea fruitlessly several times before, and shown little appetite for the rough-and-tumble tactics of traditional partisan politics.

[snip]

Close allies of Mr. Bloomberg are divided as to whether it would be wise for him to run for president in 2020, and at least one longtime associate has predicted that he will never seek the White House. Bradley Tusk, Mr. Bloomberg’s former campaign manager who helped him explore an independent candidacy in 2016, declared at a recent dinner in Washington, D.C., that he expected Mr. Bloomberg to toy with running before opting out yet again, multiple people who attended the event confirmed.

Bloomberg's public flirtation with presidential politics has become a structural feature of the two-party system in the United States. He has threatened to run in every presidential election going back to 2004. 

Bloomberg's intention is to maintain popular fealty to an imaginary "center," a fiction that has served the plutocrats well for the last 40 years. After Hillary's win on Super Tuesday in 2016, Bloomberg pulled the plug on a third-party campaign because it appeared that Hillary would sail to victory in the Dem primary over her challenger from Vermont. Needless to say, Bloomberg misjudged badly regarding both Hillary's popularity in the general election, and Trump's.

Bloomberg's not making the same mistake this time around. He is actively campaigning for Democrats in suburban districts. He wants to flip the House in 2018. He'll throw his hat in the ring in 2020 only if  Bernie is on his way to securing the nomination, something I consider unlikely because I think it already belongs to Andrew Cuomo. Bloomberg is fine with Andrew Cuomo.

Bloomberg Floats Independent Presidential Run Once Again: Growing Acceptance by 1% that Hillary's Candidacy Doomed

More proof of the doomed nature of Hillary's presidential run is The New York Times story that appeared yesterday ("Bloomberg, Sensing an Opening, Revisits a Potential White House Run" by Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman) reporting that billionaire media mogul and former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg is considering an independent run for the White House. Troubled by the rise of Trump and Cruz on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left Bloomberg says he will spend $1 billion of his vast personal fortune to win the presidency; he will make a decision by March.

Having recently finished reading Theresa Amato's Grand Illusion, a book that explores the many significant barriers to an independent or third party presidential bid in the United States, Bloomberg will need to spend a hefty chunk of his earmarked $1 billion just getting on the ballot in enough states -- not even all 50 -- to guarantee a majority of votes in the Electoral College.

Historically the raison d'être of independent or third party presidential runs is issue based. In the last 25 years, for example, we have had Ralph Nader's left progressive Green Party challenge and Ross Perot's deficits -- budget and trade -- jeremiad. Bloomberg, in this upside down world we live in, would be launching a first -- an independent presidential campaign in defense of a failed status quo. (An argument could me made that John Anderson's independent run against Carter and Reagan in 1980 was a precursor.)

The point I want to make here is that there will be no Bloomberg volunteers ready for mobilization because he is not leading with any issues other than "None of the above." The 1% is not going to sign up to gather signatures on street corners in Dallas to get Bloomberg on the ballot in Texas. Possibly he could lasso some soccer moms if he comes forward with something bold on guns, or maybe some suburban conservationists if he talks up renewable energy. But until that happens he is going to have to pay for absolutely everything. One billion U.S. dollars cannot buy the White House if you are peddling snake oil that the rubes have already sampled to their detriment.

The big takeaway of the Burns and Haberman article is that the Establishment, the 1%, the ruling elite -- pick your label -- is beginning to accept the obvious: Trump is going to win (a must-read on the GOP's coming to acceptance about Trump is Friday's "Donald Trump or Ted Cruz? Republicans Argue Over Who Is Greater Threat" by Jonathan Martin, backed up by the story about longtime Iowa senator Charles Grassley appearing at a Trump rally yesterday) and Hillary cannot win a general election against Trump, and she might not even be able to fend off Sanders in the primary.

A passage in the Burns and Haberman piece that captures the freak-out currently underway in Establishment circles is the quote from corrupt power broker and Clintonista Ed Rendell, the guy who as Philadelphia District Attorney prosecuted no one for the bombing of the MOVE house on Osage Avenue that destroyed a city block:

Edward G. Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania and a past Democratic National Committee chairman, said he believed Mr. Bloomberg could compete in the race if activist candidates on the left and right prevailed in the party primaries.

“Mike Bloomberg for president rests on the not-impossible but somewhat unlikely circumstance of either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz versus Bernie Sanders,” said Mr. Rendell, a close ally of Mrs. Clinton’s who is also a friend of Mr. Bloomberg’s. “If Hillary wins the nomination, Hillary is mainstream enough that Mike would have no chance, and Mike’s not going to go on a suicide mission.” 

In a three-way race featuring Mr. Sanders and Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Rendell said he might back the former New York mayor. 

“As a lifelong Democrat, as a former party chairman, it would be very hard for me to do that,” he said. “But I would certainly take a look at it — absolutely.”

This is a former head of the DNC saying he will not back the party's nominee for president. What does that tell you about party leaders' faith in democracy? It should tell you that they don't have time for it.

It seems like every presidential election cycle for the last 12 years we go through this "Bloomberg might run as an independent" kabuki. Mike Bloomberg is a smart guy who knows how to read the polling he no doubt commissions for himself. He has never run as a independent for president because he can't win. He is a billionaire solidly of the billionaire class. His natural constituents are the elites who already control the duopoly, not the rank-and-file voters who have abandoned Bush and are making haste to abandon Clinton.

Republicans are spinning a Bloomberg independent candidacy as great for the GOP, just as they did at first when Perot decided to run in 1992. Now it is conventional wisdom that Perot elected Clinton.

Bloomberg will not run if Hillary holds on and wins the Democratic primary. He very well might run if Sanders wins, though the fact that the GOP appears now to be coalescing around Trump might keep him on the sidelines.

If it does end up being Bernie vs. Trump/Bloomberg, that is a bonanza for the Sanders camp. Bernie will be the only candidate able to say that he is not a billionaire.

The real problem for Hillary going forward is now that she has gone negative she is in a box. Read Brent Budowsky's "As Sanders Soars, Clinton Goes Negative — A Bad Move":

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) may be poised to win both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, and as Sanders soars, rival Hillary Clinton is making the worst possible move of launching an all-out attack against him, which is the same mistake she made when she attacked Barack Obama in 2008. 

For some time, I have strongly advised people close to the Clintons to not go negative against Sanders. Clinton needs to inspire voters about why she should be president, not become a negative candidate who reminds voters of the kind of politics they want to end.

Remember — and this is a key point — that when Clinton attacks Sanders for the vision and programs he believes in, she is attacking the large numbers of Democrats and independents who believe in what Sanders believes and favor the same changes and reforms that he promotes.

The Clinton attack against Sanders is the worst possible move for her and for Democrats. Because Clinton has low ratings for trustworthiness, whereas Sanders's ratings are high, a Clinton attack against Sanders will backfire.

Even worse for Clinton, the problem is that she has never articulated an uplifting and exciting reason for voters to back her, and her negative attack against Sanders will drown out any positive message she may have, if she has one.

Clinton's attacks against Sanders sounds strangely similar to her attacks against Obama in 2008. She is charging — among many things — that Sanders does not offer a realistic program, which is both condescending and wrong and an insult not only to Sanders, but to the large number of Democrats who are with Sanders.

What a presidential candidate should do is offer a panoramic vision of how America can become better, mobilize support for that vision, seek an election victory with a mandate, and then negotiate with Congress from strength and make the compromises that must ultimately be made to win the most dramatic possible reforms. That is what important presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy did. That is what Sanders is doing.

What a presidential candidate should not do is identify with the status quo and oppose dramatic change even before the first ballot is counted and attack the change candidates as naive or unrealistic. This is what Clinton is doing with her negative attacks against Sanders.

Hillary has locked herself into a 50%+1 election scenario. This might be enough for her to muddle through in the Democratic primary based on a lack of familiarity with Sanders in red states as well as Clinton's advantage with super-delegates, but it guarantees a loss in the general against anybody but Cruz or Bush, and those two are not going to win the Republican primary.

At this point, with Iowa a little more than a week away, I am starting to think Hillary might not be the Democratic nominee.

The Government Crackdown on Occupy

There is a good post today on naked capitalism; it provides a rundown on the story from last week that the FBI, in coordination with the banking sector and the Department of Homeland Security, surveilled Occupy Wall Street and turned a blind eye to an assassination plot targetting OWS participants (which David Lindorff writes about this weekend on the Counterpunch web site).

No surprise here. For a few months at the end of 2011 things looked hopeful, like the people were going to rise up and push back against the plutocracy. This of course got the domestic security apparatus scrambling.

I supported the Occupy movement in Seattle by participating in rallies at the original Westlake Park encampment. I also gave a modest amount of money every month to Occupy Seattle. My local union donated food and supplies. When the camp relocated to Seattle Central Community College I stopped by and visited Fridays after work. Originally it was a clean, well-run tent city; then, after the rains came in November, an appearance of squalor took hold. The arrival of inclement weather and Bloomberg's razing of the Zuccotti Park encampment proved to be hurdles too high for the movement to clear.