Democratic Presidential Debate: Bloomberg Disaster
GoLocalProv Political Team
Democratic Presidential Debate: Bloomberg Disaster
But, the debate was a house of horrors for Bloomberg. Much of the beat down was at the hands of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
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Bloomberg Loser:
Bloomberg: The mayor doesn’t have much experience debating. His last one was back in 2009 — a one-on-one matchup in a race where he was a heavy favorite. This one was a different animal, and it got ugly in a hurry for Bloomberg. He was the big target from the get-go. He came off as very technocratic, and he often didn’t jump in to defend himself, apparently hoping the bad moments would pass. But they persisted.
In his first appearance in a presidential debate, Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, struggled from the start to address his past support for stop-and-frisk policing and the allegations he has faced over the years of crude and disrespectful behavior toward women. Time and again, Mr. Bloomberg had obvious difficulty countering criticism that could threaten him in a Democratic Party that counts women and African-Americans among its most important constituencies.
Turns out Mike Bloomberg is exactly what Elizabeth Warren needed to break through in the 2020 Democratic primary. And he’s not just a foil for her on the campaign trail — this is something she believes in, and it shows.
Warren was quick to go after the billionaire at Wednesday’s Democratic debate in Nevada, noting his Trump-like history of calling women “fat broads” and “horse-faced lesbians.” And the Massachusetts Democrat did not relent. She went after his history on stop-and-frisk policing as New York City’s mayor. She called him out for refusing to release women who have worked for him and accused him and his company of harassment and discrimination from nondisclosure agreements. And broadly, it’s clear that whether or not it’s her who gets the Democratic nomination, she absolutely, positively does not want it to be Bloomberg.
“Look, I’ll support whoever the Democratic nominee is, but understand this,” Warren said on Wednesday. “Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another.”
He rolled his eyes when Elizabeth Warren pressed him to release women at his company from non-disclosure agreements related to alleged mistreatment.
He suggested he can’t simply use TurboTax, like many Americans, to crunch his billions in order to speed up the release of his tax returns.
He was rusty. He was testy. He was out of touch. And, for a candidate often shielded by the scripted one-liners of killer campaign advisers, he was on his own — unable to hide his peevish demeanor and unable to portray himself, as his campaign has tried to do, as the clear choice to stop Bernie Sanders and beat Donald Trump.
Not only has Mike Bloomberg spent a lot of money on buying TV airtime, the ads his team has made for him are generally really good. If you knew him primarily through those ads, plus a vague sense that he seemed to be a popular mayor of a big city and made a lot of money running some kind of business, then it’s easy to see why you’d be impressed by his campaign.
What we saw on the debate stage in Nevada Wednesday night is a reality New Yorkers have long been aware of: the man is a wooden charisma vacuum with no natural talent for campaigning.
On one level, that shouldn’t matter so much. The presidency is not primarily an acting gig, after all, it’s a matter of substance. On the other hand, in a campaign where “electability” has loomed so large as a consideration, it’s important to be clear that possession of vast wealth is the entirety of the electability case for Bloomberg.