gracchusdixit

As I watched the Democratic presidential primary debate in Las Vegas several days ago, I suddenly realized how an ancient Roman must have felt, perched on the bleachers in the Colosseum and watching the grisly but nonetheless riveting spectacle of gladiators hacking one another to pieces.  The spectacle of the Democratic gladiatorial contest in Las Vegas was no less riveting.  After months of the candidates playing nice with one another, the blades were finally drawn, and blood was spilt.  The blade that drew the most blood was wielded by Senator Elizabeth Warren, and most of the body parts that lay strewn on the arena floor at the end of the night were those of billionaire-turned-man-who-wants-to-run-the-country Michael Bloomberg. 

For weeks now, the punditocracy has been advancing two rationales for the plausibility of Bloomberg’s candidacy.  The first is that his virtually limitless wealth can fundamentally change the race, enabling him to saturate the airwaves with slick advertising and deploy a “data-driven” political juggernaut run by highly-paid tech wizards.  The second is that voters will welcome him with open arms for finally providing a powerful but “moderate” alternative to progressive (and, according to the conventional wisdom of the chattering classes, unelectable) candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.  

Joe Biden, of course, has predicated his entire campaign on being the “moderate” who was most “electable,” but his dismal performance in earlier debates and the first two primaries has undercut that proposition.  The other middle-of-the-road hopefuls latched upon by the pundits, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, have had their own brief moments in the sun.  However, no convincing case can be made that either of them has even the slightest chance of winning the Democratic nomination.

Enter the billionaire businessman from New York in his self-appointed and media-anointed role as the knight in shining armor who may yet save the Democratic Party from itself.  This vision of Bloomberg has always been a fanciful bubble, pumped up, much like stock market bubbles, by speculation, wishful thinking, and a stubborn disinclination to take the facts into account.  On the stage in Las Vegas, the bubble burst.

Bloomberg was exposed for being precisely what he is:  a smug, self-satisfied rich guy, utterly devoid of self-awareness or humility and yet absolutely convinced that he is entitled to become president, simply because he is used to getting what he wants.  Bloomberg’s presumption was challenged by every other candidate on the stage but most relentlessly—and effectively—by Warren, whose legal skills of withering cross-examination were on full display.  She forced Bloomberg to confront the most repugnant aspects of his personal, professional, and political behavior:  his history of dismissive misogyny, his use of non-disclosure agreements to suppress complaints about the hostile work environment in his company, the blatantly racist intent of the “stop and frisk” policing he championed when he was the mayor of New York City, and his cozy relationship with his pals on Wall Street.   Against none of these challenges was he able to offer a plausible defense.  

There were a number of moments when Bloomberg damned himself by unintentionally showing us his true colors.  The most notable came when one of the moderators asked him whether he deserved his $65 billion fortune.  It was one of the few questions he didn’t hesitate to answer.  Of course he deserved his fortune, Bloomberg huffed, because he has “worked hard” for his money.

A line-man who clambers up poles to string cable during a January blizzard “works hard”.  A logger who slogs through the sodden mud of an Oregon forest to fell trees taller than skyscrapers “works hard”.  A doctor or a nurse who hovers for back-breaking hours over a surgical table trying to save lives “works hard”.  A vulnerable immigrant, trapped in a  sweltering restaurant kitchen where he is paid less than the minimum wage, “works hard”.  Next to such people, Michael Bloomberg has never done did a hard day’s work in his life.

Nor is he the “self-made man” he pretends to be.  While it is true that he didn’t inherit a fortune from an indulgent father, as did Donald Trump, Bloomberg is no Horatio Alger.  He attended Johns Hopkins and went on from there to the Harvard Business School, after which he promptly went to work on Wall Street.  To pay for this elite education and the network of influential contacts it gave him, he never had to wait on tables or saddle himself with debt or beg for a scholarship.  There is no shame in any of this.  But we shouldn’t be asked to believe that Michael Bloomberg pulled himself up by the proverbial bootstraps.

It may be that Bloomberg will stage a comeback in the next Democratic debate or that a new avalanche of spending will enable him to blunt or skirt further criticism.  No amount of money, however, can re-inflate the Bloomberg bubble that burst in Last Vegas.  If he hopes to stay in the race, he will have to do more than pontificate about his work ethic, the sanctity of capitalism, or the now ludicrous proposition that he is the best candidate to take on Donald Trump.  After Elizabeth Warren succeeded in slicing him up with a rhetorical scalpel, who is foolish enough to believe that Michael Bloomberg would be capable of withstanding the meat ax Donald Trump will wield if they ever confront one another in a debate?

There are those in the media who have suggested that Warren’s attack on Michael Bloomberg was a “tactical” move designed to reinvigorate a flagging campaign.  For all I know, that may be the case.  But there is another explanation.  It may just be that Warren, along with the other candidates on the stage, was genuinely outraged by what Michael Bloomberg is trying to do.  And so should we all.  

Bloomberg is free to spend his money in whatever way he chooses.  That does not give him the right to purchase a presidential nomination or to buy his way into the White House.  What Bloomberg is doing is fundamentally anti-democratic, and a political party that calls itself Democratic must therefore disavow him completely. Whatever else you may think of Elizabeth Warren, she was incontestably right when she declared that the Democratic Party cannot hope to win back the White House if its only answer to the catastrophe of Donald Trump is to nominate another smug, self-absorbed billionaire, who cannot tell the difference between his own wealth and the welfare of the nation.