11.13

What Should We Expect From Michael Bloomberg?

Here’s how I see it playing out:

1. Bloomberg officially jumps into the race in the next couple weeks
2. Media gives him a narrative of “serious candidate concerned about unreasonable policies from Bernie and Warren”.
3. Bloomberg spends a ton of money attacking Warren/Bernie as unrealistic which they probably deserve but which voters probably don’t care about because it’s more about the concept/feeling than the execution.
4. He gets some real support from the moderate liberal types in Iowa and New Hampshire, who are naturally more skeptical of the “we’re going to fix everything” rhetoric from the party’s left wing.
5. He completely fails to capture the “aw shucks, I’m just a normal guy” vibe that Biden embodies.
6. He gets quickly bogged down in the gun issue.
7. The GOP jumps hard on how he tried to ban large sodas in NYC - 1’s of people think that was a great idea. Bernie gets a nice soundbite of how he doesn’t give a fuck about soda size, Warren puts out a calculator for how big Jeff Bezos’s sodas are compared to yours.
8. It becomes clear that he has no natural base other than rich people (Manhattan-ites).
9. Moderate liberals give him a shot because they miss the Democratic party of the 90s/00s, but they just can’t really find something in him to relate to.
10. An entire wing of working class Democrats won’t even consider him because fuck billionaires.
11. His polls are especially atrocious among Black voters because they remember his stop-and-frisk broken-window policing in NYC.
12. When the first votes come in, he’ll steal a decent chunk of Iowa/New Hampshire from Biden but still get fourth place at best. Maybe steal some from Buttigieg too.
13. He’ll effectively kneecap Biden in the medium-to-long run.
14. He’ll bruise up Warren and Bernie’s policies - hopefully they use this as a reason to get better and stronger at responding to basic economic questions about their lofty proposals.
15. He’ll drop out before he makes an awful showing in South Carolina and other Southern states.

I’m honestly not sure why he wants to do this. Does he actually see a path to the nomination, or does he just trying to make the point that Biden is doing a piss-poor job of representing the moderate, pro-business side of the Democratic party? Maybe he just wants a chance to force Bernie and Warren to do the math. Maybe it’s ego? It’s hard to know what these billionaires are thinking.

Lafayette

November 13, 2019