Mike Bloomberg's Unsettling Ascent

When I first heard that Michael Bloomberg was seriously considering running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 I assumed, naively and incorrectly as it turns out, that if the former New York mayor DID decide to waste his time and money running for the highest office in the land he would be laughed out of the race almost instantly. 

I assumed that the press and genuine contenders for the nomination would not treat Bloomberg as a serious candidate, or legitimate threat to either Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, but rather as a narcissistic egomaniac launching a vanity run for president that should be treated as nothing more than an arrogant rich man's indulgence with no chance whatsoever of succeeding. 

Boy, was I wrong! Instead of being laughed out of the race or rightly deprived of the attention and validation he desperately craves and has been paying good money for, Bloomberg has been everywhere these last few weeks, in no small part because he has invested a fuck-ton of his own vast fortune into advertising on Facebook, infamously spending a whole lot of loot with notorious meme villains Fuck Jerry in an attempt to go viral that can’t help but conjure up that familiar gif of Steve Buscemi from 30 Rock trying and failing to speak the language of his fellow kids. 

I'm not sure why this surprised me but it turns out that it is one hundred percent possible to buy your way into being taken seriously presidential candidate even if your campaign begins way after most other contenders for the nomination have dropped out.

Why? Like so many terrible things about the current political world, the blame can be safely laid at the feet of one Donald J. Trump. Trump similarly said that he’d use his fortune to fund his campaign back in 2016 but I assumed that he was lying because he’s a pathological liar seemingly incapable of truth but also because Trump never spends his own money on anything when he can spend other people’s money or no money at all. 

Centrist and Conservative Democrats seem to be of the mindset that the only way to beat a BAD Trump is with a GOOD Trump. They seem to think, perhaps correctly, that it wasn’t just Trump’s horrible, racist, hateful policies and ideas that voters responded to but his horrible, racist, hateful personality and persona as well. 

So the only way to beat Trump, in this view, is to pit him against ANOTHER arrogant New York billionaire with a deeply problematic history of saying and doing egregiously racist and sexist things who thinks that marijuana is a dangerous gateway drug that should be kept illegal for the sake of keeping as many POC in prison as possible. 

According to this cracked perspective, it’s actually a good thing that Bloomberg is, at the very least, pretty racist because heaven knows candidates certainly went for the candidate of egregious racism last time around. This contingent similarly thinks the way to beat a seventy-something, out of touch macho bully prone to talking nonsense about a world he no longer understands is to pit him against ANOTHER seventy-something, out of touch macho bully prone to talking nonsense about a world he no longer understands. 

Thanks to Trump, “I’m a hotshot New York billionaire who should be president because I’ve banged a lot of hot chicks and made a fuck ton of money and I’m super-famous” is now considered a pitch with strong populist appeal to a heartland audience. 

The people want a revolution. The people want change. The people want new blood for a new world. The Democratic Party seems disconcertingly intent on countering with someone who is a LOT like Donald Trump in terms of personality, background and ego but not quite as terrible or as hateful.

That’s wrong. There’s no such thing as a good Trump because the president is rotten down to the core. 

So is Bloomberg. So it is DEFINITELY time for us to end his sad little fantasy and stop treating Bloomberg like anything more than a bully who needs to take his money and go the fuck home. 

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