Michael Bloomberg enters the race. Why?

Submitted by InfoBrics, authored by William Stroock, author of military fiction…

In the year of campaigning since the 2018 midterm elections, the race for the Democrat Party presidential nomination is as confused as ever.  As of this writing, there is no clear front runner with Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and now Pete Buttigieg all polling at or about 15% nationally followed by several also-rans.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is the most electable of this group.

Despite age and scandal, Biden’s campaign remains stubbornly alive. Biden has fended off serious challenges from Senator Kamala Harris (D-California) and the above-mentioned Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). National polls place him at or near the top of the Democrat heap. Even so, Biden is a stumbling gaff machine who looks his age.

Also looking his age is Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont).

Despite having a heart attack earlier this month, Sanders is on the campaign trail peddling Socialist ideas even older than himself. Bernie Sanders may be an old Socialist, but he has a following of fellow old socialists and young Millennials who don’t remember the Cold War. These people support him no matter what. Sanders is endorsed by the Democrat’s young socialist extraordinaire, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Senator Elizabeth Warren took the lead during the summer. However, the more the Democrat electorate sees Warren, the less it likes her. Warren’s myriad ideas are expensive pipedreams with narrow appeal to affluent, bicoastal Dems.  Worse, Warren has an authenticity problem. As is well known, she lied about having Native American Ancestry. More recently, she claimed to have been fired from a teaching job for being pregnant. Records show Warren’s school board offered her a contract extension.

Warren is falling behind Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, the fourth largest city in Indiana. Mayor Pete has several plusses as a candidate. He is well-spoken, served in the United States Navy and is young. Actually, he is the only frontrunner who’s not 70 or above. Buttigieg is also gay. In the Democrat Party of 2019, concerned less with ideas and more with identity, Mayor Buttigieg’s gayness is a great asset at least among white, progressive Democrats. In some polls, he’s leading in both New Hampshire and Iowa, the fourth and sixth whitest states in the union. But Buttigieg stands little chance in the south where African Americans dominate the Democrat electorate.

None of the four frontrunners has support broad enough to win the nomination.

Which brings us to Michael Bloomberg.

The former three term mayor of New York City is an interesting man. Born and raised in Boston, Bloomberg founded his own media company named for himself and turned it into a current events and business news colossus. Bloomberg is a self-made billionaire many times over. Even though he was a lifelong Democrat, in 2001, Bloomberg registered as a Republican and won the party’s nomination for Mayor. He ran against Democrat nominee Mark Green, an impossibly smug liberal who actually claimed that had he been mayor on 9/11, he would have done as well, or better than Rudy Giuliani. Bloomberg won a squeaker of an election by about 50,000 votes. He was reelected easily in 2005 and 2009.

Bloomberg proved to be a competent mayor. He preserved Mayor Giuliani’s anti-crime legacy. Under Bloomberg, the graffiti stayed off the subways and the streets free of bums and muggers. He drove the murder rate ever further down via policies like stop, question, and frisk. Bloomberg did have some annoying nanny state tendencies like trying to ban trans-fats, salts, and large sugary drinks. He crisscrossed major city thoroughfares with annoying bike lanes, instituted a bike renting program, and mandated new buildings include spaces for bicycles.  During his last term, he travelled the globe lecturing on environmental issues while he spent his weekends at his home in Bermuda. Still, by the time Bloomberg handed Gracie Mansion over to the disastrous Bill de Blasio, New York City was safer than it had ever been.

Bloomberg had not been a man to pander. Even though he become mayor of New York City, the year after the Yankees/Mets World series, Bloomberg remained loyal to his beloved (and loathed in New York City) Boston Red Sox. But, Bloomberg panders now. In one of his first speeches on the campaign trail, he apologized for his stop, question and frisk policy saying simply, ‘I was wrong and I’m sorry.’

Bloomberg has an excellent resume, name recognition, and is vowing to spend hundreds of millions of his own dollars. But, he is running as a moderate in a party whose heart and soul lies on the left. Worse for Bloomberg, the Democrat Party of woke, leftist grievance politics is not going to nominate a white man for president, much less a Jew.  Bloomberg will spend millions of his own dollars and go nowhere, leaving the Democrat race exactly where it was when he entered.