Can we really say that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s long history of racist remarks and policies is catching up with him when he’s erected a giant wall of cash between himself and criticism as he zooms away from it in a rocket ship similarly constructed of cash money? Let’s say instead that Bloomberg’s past is being reported on, and commented on by his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, but that Bloomberg’s message (that he can beat Trump, because money) appears to be holding its own thanks to, it cannot be emphasized enough, the boost it gets from a tsunami of Bloomberg’s personal money.
The other candidates for the Democratic nomination—you know, the ones who have never held elected office as 60-year-old Republicans—have a few things to say about Bloomberg’s record. After his comments surfaced blaming the end of a racist lending policy for the 2008 economic collapse, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted out a video about the continuing racist legacy of redlining. Speaking in Las Vegas over the weekend, Sen. Bernie Sanders tore into Bloomberg’s history of “racist policies like stop-and-frisk.”
On Meet the Press Sunday, former Vice President Joe Biden highlighted the source of Bloomberg’s rise in the polls, but with an optimistic twist: “Sixty billion dollars can buy you a lot of advertising, but it can’t erase your record.”
So far, though, Bloomberg’s campaign is suggesting that $60 billion can do a lot to get people to forgive his record. He has racked up an impressive list of endorsements from prominent black elected officials willing to go to bat for him, and his polling and the crowds at his events suggest substantial support from black voters. (On this point, Michael Harriot is a must-read.)
One thing we don’t know about Bloomberg’s run at this point, though, is how he will fare on an actual Election Day. He sat out the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary and is similarly not competing in South Carolina. Rather, his campaign is targeting Super Tuesday, looking to make a giant splash across multiple states after his competitors have exhausted many of their resources on the early races. But right now we do not know how that will go in reality. We don’t know a few other things, too. We don’t know what the next racist Bloomberg comment of years past will be. We don’t know if he’ll make it into a debate and stumble there, on national television. And we don’t know what the shape of the primary field will be coming out of Nevada and South Carolina.
What we do know right now is that a personal fortune can be leveraged to turn its owner into a serious candidate for the presidency despite pretty much everything else about him. That’s a terrible statement about the U.S. political system, but given not just Bloomberg but Donald Trump and Tom Steyer, it’s undeniably a true one.
