Democrats could be mistaken in their thinking of Bloomberg

Max Burns, The Independent

When then-candidate Donald Trump launched his long-shot bid for the presidency in 2015, smart Republicans warned that he represented an existential threat to the Grand Old Party. History has proven the “Never Trumper” movement right. The Republican Party is now a husk of its former self, rotted from the inside by the corrosive poison of Trumpism.

Now Democrats are flirting with the same ideological suicide in the form of another billionaire New Yorker – former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Fortunately for the country, there is still time to prevent the Democratic Party from suffering the same fate as the Republicans.

Bloomberg announced his bid last November, along with a bold plan to forsake traditional fundraising while blanketing the nation in over $400 million of television and social media advertising. Bloomberg’s digital campaign is so pervasive that it is nearly impossible to watch a YouTube or Hulu video without being bombarded by the Bloom.

The results are staggering: Bloomberg now sits at a comfortable third place in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, all without a single appearance on the debate stage (until Wednesday night, when he made his debut). Since January, Bloomberg has leaned into a fusillade of attack ads against Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders. Establishment Democrats nervous about the viability of a Sanders campaign are now flirting with the idea of embracing Bloomberg’s pay-and-pray candidacy.

What is wrong with my Democratic colleagues?

Michael Bloomberg embodies two traits that ought to be anathema to anyone committed to Democratic values: the arrogance of plutocratic wealth and the victimization of the marginalized groups Democratic policies are committed to protecting.

None of the sleaze is new: The Daily Beast’s Harry Siegel chronicled the agenda-light, cynicism-heavy record of then-Mayor Bloomberg back in 2011, shortly after Mayor Mike used the Great Recession of 2007-08 as an excuse to rewrite New York law and gift himself an unprecedented third mayoral term.

At the time, Bloomberg’s argument was that New Yorkers needed someone who understood the roots of the mortgage crisis to help the city weather a sweeping economic downturn. As it turns out, Bloomberg’s “knowledge” of the root causes of the Great Recession boiled down to blaming African Americans for living in communities they couldn’t afford.

In a stunning video recorded in 2008 which resurfaced last week, Bloomberg argued that getting rid of ‘redlining’ – the openly racist government policy that prevented African Americans from obtaining mortgages on equal footing with their white peers – was the true cause of the recession. That’s right: a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination bemoaned the end of one of America’s most discriminatory and destructive housing policies.

Nowhere is Bloomberg’s record on race worse than where it intersects with policing. Bloomberg has struggled to address the disastrous legacy of the ‘Stop and Frisk’ program he promoted as mayor. Even as Bloomberg apologises, he exhibits a Trump-like willingness to blame black and brown youths for their own harassment at the hands of the police.

To the Democratic elites increasingly fearful of a Trump victory in November, Bloomberg represents a “lesser of two evils” scenario. They should know better. By compromising the core issues that make us Democrats – and abandoning the communities Democrats have represented for decades – we hollow out the Democratic Party. What is left isn’t inspiring or progressive. It is a party made unrecognizable for the sole purpose of victory.

Bloombergism rests on the flawed premise that Democrats must surrender our values to win. It is worth asking why Democrats choose to be Democrats, and whether they will remain Democrats when those core values are thrown away in a fit of electoral panic.

If there is any hope to repair the generational damage of Trumpism, Democrats must strive for more than a victory without values.