It’s Official: Mike Bloomberg is Running to Stop Bernie; Not Trump
The former Mayor of New York is more interested in upholding the status quo than upending it
In Anand Giridharadas’ book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, he quotes Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1958 book, The Leopard, when he writes “For things to remain the same, things will have to change.” Giridharadas’ uses this quote to describe the elite of today, who claim to want to overturn the status quo, while actually working to maintain it.
Mike Bloomberg may as well have been the antagonist of Giridharadas’ book and his campaign slogan very well could have been that quote. For all his bluster about being the candidate most willing and able to take on Donald Trump, Bloomberg made clear on Wednesday night that he is running to stop a different candidate altogether.
Bloomberg got attacked from all angles in Las Vegas, most noticeably from Elizabeth Warren, but also from Joe Biden (over the Affordable Care Act and Stop and Frisk) and Pete Buttigieg (on his wealth and divisiveness), but only seemed to take great pleasure in responding to the attacks from Bernie Sanders. Bloomberg didn’t directly attack any of the other candidates on the stage, but he made sure to label Sanders a “communist” and on the irony of a self-proclaimed socialist being a “millionaire with three houses.” This confrontation came after a week of critical advertisements and statements launched from the Bloomberg campaign towards the Senator from Vermont.
But the former Mayor of New York’s opposition to Sanders is evident even beyond the recent attacks. The entire raison-d’être of the Bloomberg campaign is to become the moderate alternative to Sanders in order to refute the progressive changes that frontrunner and maintain the status quo.
Democratic opposition to Trump can broadly be broken down into three axes: Economic policy, social policy (mostly as it pertains to racial and gender equality), and the unique threat that Trump poses to American democracy. In each of these three categories, Bloomberg appears to be far closer to Trump than he is to Sanders.
Although he has recently postured himself as a fighter against income inequality, Bloomberg’s record as Mayor of New York and since consistently depict somebody who is not interested in progressive taxation or workers’ rights. He has said that he has “never been in favor of raising the minimum wage.” In a 2013 interview with New York Magazine, Bloomberg said that criticisms that he governed for the rich were unfair because wealthy residents of New York City were “our tax base,” before adding on “If we can find a bunch of billionaires around the world to move here, that would be a godsend, because that’s where the revenue comes to take care of everybody else.” This is a clear, explicit endorsement of trickle-down economics.
Bloomberg not only doesn’t have progressive solutions for income inequality, the interview with New York Magazine suggests that he doesn’t see it as an issue at all. Forget Sanders, Bloomberg is far closer to Trump in this respect than any of his competitors for the Democratic nomination, and he seems to know it, too. As recently last March, Bloomberg predicted that he couldn’t win the Democratic nomination because that would require him to change his views and go on some kind of an apology tour for his past.
This apology tour would likely primarily be focused on some of Bloomberg’s position on social policy, namely his support for a militarized law enforcement and his treatment of women in the workplace. The staggering number of stories over Bloomberg’s troubling views on crime and women’s rights in the workplace are too long to list here, but are just a view highlights that demonstrate that he has no interest in reversing the crises of police brutality against young black men or of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, issues which have launched two of the most important social movements of this generation.
In 2013, Bloomberg said that we “disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.” In recently leaked audio from a 2015 speech at the Aspen Institute, he stated that we could “xerox” the description of 16-to-25 year old minority men and send them to police departments across the country, because they were ones committing all of the crime. His rhetoric was brought to life during his time as Mayor, when the NYPD stopped over 600,000 people per year under stop and frisk. Of this huge group of people 90% were people of color, and a majority of those stopped were innocent. Contrary to his claims, the policy was also ineffective: Crime rates in New York dropped more significantly after stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional.
Bloomberg’s record on women’s rights is not any better. The stories that have circulated since Bloomberg became a serious contender include stories of harassment in the workplace, derogatory comments towards women based on their looks, and disgusting comments towards co-workers of his who were either pregnant or had just given birth. In both cases of racial profiling, criminal justice, and misogyny, Trump obviously has his own set of problems, but considering that he is the most shameless politician in America, he will surely use this history as a line of attack should Bloomberg become the nominee. It should say enough about Bloomberg’s candidacy that Sean Hannity has already begun to criticize him from the left.
Even more conservative voters, or voters who don’t care much about policy should be worried about Bloomberg’s candidacy. Like Trump, the Mayor represents a threat to American democracy. He has entirely self-funded his campaign, and can continue to do so, meaning that he is accountable to no one. He has a history of using his funds to donate to both Democrats and Republicans, and can likely use this money to influence potential endorsers. He, breaking with all other Democratic candidates, and all modern-era Presidents before Trump, has yet to release his tax returns. He essentially bought his way onto the debate stage, and has not only flooded the airwaves of states around the country, but also dried up much of the political talent by offering salaries and benefits that no other candidate can match, harming not only his competitors for the Presidency but also down-ballot candidates running for office. He seemed offended at the attacks thrown at him in the debate, even noting that some of the complaints against him were because of some jokes that “they didn’t like.” As bad as Trump’s ideas are, Bloomberg is running on the power of his purse and his personality even more than the President did. He has already been musing that his best chance at winning the nomination is not by winning the most votes in the primaries, but rather through an undemocratic process at the convention.
Bloomberg, in both policy and political style, is more similar to Trump than to his Democratic counterparts. This is not to say that Bloomberg isn’t running to defeat Trump. He has desperately wanted to be President for years, flirting with a run for the GOP nomination in 2012 and independent run in 2016 before declaring this year. He likely personally disdains Trump, a fellow New Yorker with less money and fewer political accomplishments who took what Bloomberg viewed as his rightful place as the billionaire candidate running to shake things up in DC.
But Bloomberg is not running to stop what Trump represents. The only issues where he has been consistently liberal are the ones where all the Democrats generally agree: gay rights, gun regulation, climate change, and some kind of immigration reform. On the issues that really threaten Bloomberg’s power and worldview, Bernie Sanders is the candidate that stands in his way. His campaign is set up as the antidote to Sanders’ Democratic socialism; Trump-lite in some cases; Trump-plus in others. Before Sanders established his staying power as one of the frontrunners, Bloomberg was ready to stay on the sidelines. But he, like Giridharadas, understands that in order for nothing to fundamentally change there needs to at the very least be an illusion of change. For voters in 2020, Bloomberg hopes that he can be that illusion.
