Seems that Mike Blooomberg literally eclipsed every Democratic candidate today on MNSBC, at least the afternoon shows such as Deadline: WhiteHouse and MTP Daily. Well, they threw up Bernie Sanders as the kind of polar opposite to Bloomberg, but except for that Joe Biden interview on Nicole Wallace’s show, it was Bloombergpalooza. Seriously, there was little to no mention of Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or Warren. They showed a snippet of Buttigieg and Klobuchar criticizing Bloomberg, but those candidates got nothing else for today. And MTP Daily had on Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy to slobber wet kisses all over Bloomberg. The one person who seemed to cut through all the BS about Bloomberg was — wait for it — John Podhoretz.
No link or transcript yet, but Podhoretz flat out said that Bloomberg is trying to buy this election.
All the Bloomberg fans should step back and listen to that. We Democrats have been complaining for decades that wealthy Republicans buy elections, but somehow it is OK if a supposed Democrat goes out and buys an election. As long as he is going to defeat Trump, it’s OK for Bloomberg to spend obscene amounts of money to buy endorsements from politicians and other Democratic leaning political groups.
Then, Podhoretz informed all of us not in NYC about Bloomberg’s great electioneering while running for his 3rd term as mayor. Bloomberg spent over a $100 million dollars to win his 3rd term in which he won 51% of the vote. The Democrat who run against him, a guy by the name of Thompson, spent only 6 million dollars and got 46% of the vote.
I thought to myself, “I better look into this.” And here is the NYT article about that election and how much Bloomberg spent.
To eke out an election victory over the city’s low-key comptroller, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg spent $102 million of his own fortune � or about $174 per vote � according to data released Friday, making his bid for a third term the most expensive campaign in the city’s history.
Mr. Bloomberg, the wealthiest man in New York City, shattered his own records: He poured $85 million into his campaign in 2005 (or $112 per vote) and $74 million into his first bid for office in 2001 ($99 per vote).
And the $102 million tab is likely to rise, because the mayor has not yet doled out postelection bonuses to campaign workers, which have routinely exceeded $100,000 a person in years past. That spending will not be reported until after his inauguration in January.
Mr. Bloomberg has now spent at least $261 million of his own money in the pursuit of public office, more than anyone else in the United States.
I don’t know about you all, but having to spend that amount of money to get elected sort of screams to me that maybe you ain’t all that great a politician. But what do I know? Here’s more about that election.
The mayor’s campaign, which leased a 35,000-square-foot headquarters in Midtown Manhattan and paid a disc jockey $300 to perform as volunteers called voters, was widely expected to crush his Democratic opponent, William C. Thompson Jr., the city’s chief financial officer.
Mr. Thompson, who participated in the campaign finance system, was outspent by 14 to 1, and he struggled to attract experienced staff members and raise money.
His press releases misspelled his own name; his aides groused about their jobs on Facebook; and his media team was so short on cash that it resorted to running 15-second blink-and-you-miss-it TV commercials.
But Mr. Bloomberg’s unpopular drive to overturn the city’s term limits law, his lavish campaign and a sputtering economy soured thousands of New Yorkers on him, even though most admired his record in office.
On Election Day, their frustration erupted into public view: Mr. Bloomberg won by fewer than 5 percentage points, at a cost of about $20 million for each point.
Emboldened is mine.
And what about that voter turnout in that race?
Turnout was unusually low � 585,000 New Yorkers cast votes for him, compared with 753,089 in 2005 and 744,757 in 2001, records show.
Yeah, well he still won Merlin, and that is all that counts! He can beat Trump!
According to what meager data we have from national polls, most of the other Democrats can beat Trump as well. But we do have data on Bloomberg’s appeal in NYC, and that third term victory wasn’t anything to write home about. And Bloomberg wanted a fourth term from what I hear, but New Yorkers were sick of him by then and were not going to vote him back in.
Why does it take a conservative Republican to point out that Bloomberg is not some electoral juggernaut?