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If Bloomberg Wants to Buy an Election, He Should Run as a Republican
Against Trump—Not Sabotage Democrats
The mega-billionaire should be running against Trump in the Republican
primaries, not as a Democrat. If he actually cared about this country
more than stroking his massive ego that is exactly what he would be
doing.
by Robert McChesney, contributor
Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg is one of the 10 richest
persons in the world, with a net worth approaching $60 billion,
depending upon the vagaries of the stock and bond markets on any given
day.
For anyone who is not a billionaire, it is almost impossible to grasp
just how much money this is for a single human being. It would be like
calculating the distance of our planet to a distant galaxy in
centimeters. Bloomberg could spend $100 million every single day on his
presidential campaign between now and election day in November—basically
more than any candidate except Bloomberg and fellow billionaire Tom
Steyer have spent so far in the entire 2019-20 election cycle—and he
would still have a net worth greater than $30 billion. He would remain
one of the 30 richest people in the world.
Think about that. Money basically means nothing to Bloomberg. It makes
no material difference to his life—anymore than losing a penny would to
most people—to spend all this money. At age 77, why the hell not? And
wouldn't it be fun to be president? You only live once.
Bloomberg may well be successful. He has already made media corporations
hugely profitable by flooding the airwaves with his expensive and slick
advertising—he has shown something corporate America knows well:
carpet-bombing advertisements works if you can afford it—and this is
just the beginning. He has bought off everyone with a pulse so he has a
large chunk of the political class on his payroll, with many more to
come. He will accordingly get terrific mainstream press coverage, the
type any other candidate would like, and Bernie Sanders can't even begin
to imagine.
In short, Bloomberg is demonstrating the deep problems of the U.S.
Supreme Court decision that permits candidates to spend unlimited
amounts of their own money on their own campaigns, especially in a
period of breathtaking wealth inequality. Why be like the Kochs and
Sheldon Adelson and spend a fortune on other people running for office?
You are the smart guy after all; spend it on yourself.
If Bloomberg is successful, this could well become the new normal.
Presidential elections will be contests between the wealthy who put
their own money on the line. Bloomberg demonstrates that no one else
could possibly compete with them in terms of resources. We are already a
way down that road in Congressional elections. The already fading notion
that this is a functional democracy will take another sharp turn in the
wrong direction.
Bloomberg explains his decision to run for president as a concern with
how Trump is such a dreadful president and that he is best positioned to
defeat Trump, restore integrity to governance, and change his deplorable
policies, especially on the environment and guns.
Fair enough. But aside from the issue of billionaires buying elections,
there is one other extraordinary flaw in his thinking: Bloomberg should
be running against Trump as a Republican, not a Democrat. If he actually
cared about this country more than stroking his massive ego that is
exactly what he would be doing.
This is not such a crazy idea. For starters, Bloomberg is a Republican,
or he was until the tea party and then Trump showed up. He fits the
profile of the sort of traditional Republican most Americans have been
familiar with for generations. He is pro-business, pro-empire,
anti-labor, and not especially sympathetic to the concerns of minorities
or the dispossessed. These old-school Republicans were committed to the
rule of law, however, and to majority rule.
Now Trump has come in and crystallized currents already growing in the
Republican Party, like the "tea party" explosion in 2009-10. With his
endless lying and rejection of the rule of law, Trump has led the
Republicans toward a stronger embrace of authoritarianism, even, dare I
say it, fascism. There are discussions about whether Trump would even
leave office were he to lose the 2020 presidential election! The career
Republican politicians have capitulated to Trump en masse, hence
discrediting this party in toto.
Because of the way U.S. elections are structured, we have a two-party
system and it is very difficult to replace one of the existing parties
with a new one, despite popular support for introducing new ideas into
our politics. So the United States is moving toward an exceptionally
dangerous place where one of the two main parties is flirting with
fascism and dedicated to maintaining political power with only a
minority of the country supporting it. It holds the rule of law in
contempt.
Bloomberg could have been a real patriot and applied his billions of
dollars to challenging Trump and the fascist trend within the Republican
party. He could have done everything possible to expose Trump and to
locate and encourage anti-Trump Republicans. He could have supported
primary challengers on the Republican side to defeat Trump's allies and
enablers. He could have built up a parallel party apparatus employing
thousands of Republican operatives at big salaries. He probably would
have lost, but you never know for sure until you try. Bloomberg could
outspend Trump 20 to 1. He would have been able to force public
attention to this issue, and keep it there. He might have made Trump
completely crack up. At any rate, he would have had an enormous impact
that might have helped to slow and begin to reverse the Trumpian drift.
Then, if he failed to get the Republican presidential nomination,
Bloomberg could throw his support and his resources to the Democrats, as
he claims he plans to do now.
He would have been a patriot, perhaps even a hero.
Instead, he has opted to bring his takeover project to the Democratic
Party. The Democrats are currently in a profound struggle for
determining the course of the party between their progressive and
establishment wings. By most accounts, patching it up by November will
be crucial for electoral success. Bloomberg's entrance as an
establishment savior has won him understandable support from those
Democrats who dislike the progressive trend, and believe, erroneously in
my opinion, that Bloomberg is the best bet to defeat Trump in November.
If Bloomberg is successful in buying the Democratic nomination, or being
the kingmaker who decides it, it will generate such anger and antipathy
in the progressive wing of the party to the point where even his
billions cannot buy off people to see things his way. The party could
disintegrate enough that Trump waltzes to a second term, precisely what
Bloomberg claims he does not want to have happen.
The moral of the story for establishment Democrats is don't be seduced
by Bloomberg and his billions. He will break up the Democrats and cost
them the election if he or someone he supports takes the nomination.
So Bloomberg's legacy would be that he left his own party to the
neo-fascist crowd and went on to blow-up the Democrats, keeping the
Republicans in control.
That is 180 degrees away from being a hero, or a patriot.
# # #
Robert McChesney, a Common Dreams contributor, is the Gutgsell Endowed
Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Co-founder of Free Press, McChesney is the
author of numerous books on the political economy of communications and
the role media plays in democratic and capitalist societies.
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