If the Democratic parties presidential candidates involved in the 2020 presidential primary elections have one thing in common, it’s that they desperately want to defeat President Donald Trump.
But candidates have an unexpected challenge to face today and in the coming months. They have to beat the left’s mirror image of Trump as well.
Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg should be any Democrat’s biggest nightmare. If Trump and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton spawned a real-life supervillain whose main goal was to be the most unelectable creature in America, it would act a lot like Bloomberg.
Truthfully, Bloomberg is the epitome of everything wrong with American politics.
Bloomberg has a net worth of $53.4 billion according to Forbes, making him the eighth-most wealthy American. For reference, Trump is No. 275 on the list, with a net worth of $3.1 billion.
Bloomberg self-funded his campaign, like another prominent New York billionaire partially did four years ago during his run to the White House.
Despite what you may hear, it’s generally good to self-fund a campaign. If you have that kind of money, you shouldn’t rely on donations from working-class Americans.
However, Bloomberg’s spending habits cross the line of laudability and teeters into the territory of bribery and corruption.
According to The New York Times, he’s spent more than $10 billion on his political career, with most of that money going toward philanthropic efforts.
But as Times writers Alexander Burns and Nicholas Kulish wrote, “His political and philanthropic spending has also secured the allegiance or cooperation of powerful institutions and leaders within the Democratic Party who might take issue with parts of his record were they not so reliant on his largess.”
Rather than focusing on captivating the American people with his policies and ideas, Bloomberg is trying to buy the White House, plain and simple.
To get his name out there, he’s spent about $415 million on advertising as of Feb. 21, according to a Business Insider article. He dumped the money into advertisements on TV, Facebook and Twitter, among other media.
It is the reason for the increase of cringe-worthy memes depicting Bloomberg all over the internet — because apparently the only way to reach youth voters is by posting bad jokes instead of focusing on important issues.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Bloomberg campaign pays $2,500 a month to more than 500 workers to post their support for him on social media and pays popular meme accounts to promote him.
Bloomberg’s campaign has been littered with “endorsements.”
Even San Jose’s own is involved.
Mayor Sam Liccardo, who endorsed Bloomberg in Dec. 2019 and is now California co-chair of his campaign, benefited from grants and a mayoral training program at Harvard at the expense of Bloomberg Philanthropies, according to Daily Democrat and the Times.
Bloomberg received an endorsement from Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C. in January this year.
Bloomberg gave Bowser’s administration a cut of a
$70 million fund to help with climate change efforts, according to Bowser’s own website.
Also in 2018, Bloomberg’s political action committee donated $4.3 million to California Rep. Harley Rouda’s re-election efforts, according to Impact2020. She endorsed him for president in January of this year.
These “donations” and “philanthropic efforts” became an obvious motive behind Bloomberg’s endorsements.
There are many other examples, but you get the point.
Now, are briberies disguised as endorsements out of the ordinary in politics? Of course not, but they aren’t typically thrown around with this kind of money.
As non-profit and nonpartisan research group OpenSecrets notes, donations from PACs backed by the other democratic candidates have not exceeded $10,000.
To top it off, the corruption extends beyond fellow Democratic politicians. In Nov. 2019, Bloomberg gave $300,000 to the Democratic National Committee according to Vice.
In January, the DNC changed its own rules, eliminating the donor requirement for debates and allowing Bloomberg to participate in a Feb. 19 debate.
Apparently, it’s pretty cheap to pay off the establishment.
Bloomberg’s deep pockets and willingness to use them are the antithesis of what politics should be.
Candidates should be elected based on their ideas, not their bank accounts.
Remember your first time watching Barack Obama speak? The “Yes We Can’’ chants and “Hope” posters are emblazoned into every American’s brain.
Even Trump was able to galvanize a portion of the country through his rhetoric rather than his wallet, even if said rhetoric was a step backward.
Bloomberg doesn’t have a fun catchphrase, packed arenas chanting his name or even clippable sound bites from debates. At best he’s another milquetoast, run-of-the-mill Democrat unable to inspire Americans through his ideas.
The only extraordinary thing about Bloomberg is his wallet and if there’s anything we don’t need more of in the White House, it’s corruption.
