The Price Of A Bloomberg Nomination Is Too Damn High

By Eric Levitz

In the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, Democrats made a concerted effort to fortify their party’s pro-democracy and anti-corruption bona fides. Their opening salvo in the 2018 midterm campaign was the “Better Deal Agenda,” a suite of policies aimed at combating concentrated corporate power and the “armies of lobbyists” that had given big money a “stranglehold on Washington.” The first bill Nancy Pelosi’s majority passed upon taking the House was a package of voting-rights expansions and campaign-finance reforms designed to ensure that our “government works for the public interest, the people’s interest, not the special interest.” And throughout the Trump era, Democrats have hammered the resident for helping the super-rich translate their economic power into the political variety.

But the party may let a megabillionaire openly purchase its 2020 nomination anyway.

Mike Bloomberg has offered blue America a Faustian bargain: Forfeit all credibility on the issues of money in politics and democratic reform, and he will spend whatever it takes to make the bad man in the White House go away. The market for what Bloomberg is selling is large and growing, thanks in no small part to the $300 million he’s already spent advertising it. Many rank-and-file Democrats — like so many disillusioned voters in democracies the world over — like the idea of hiring a no-nonsense, post-political businessman to fix their broken government (just, you know, a less ostentatiously racist one than America’s current CEO). Meanwhile, many Democratic elites see Bloomberg as a (slightly unsavory) savior who can single-handedly stop the party from nominating a supposedly unelectable socialist, provide its vulnerable first-term suburban House members with an ideal standard-bearer, and liberate the party from all resource constraints and fundraising headaches as it rides a rising tide of billionaire bucks back into power.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/why-democrats-should-not-nominate-bloomberg-sexual-harassment-plutocracy.html