Michael Bloomberg
It might not be cold enough in Hell for a snowball, but it’s still a pretty cold day there when I’m reading Ross Douthat (if you’re being a smartass, it was 36° here in Baldwin Borough). That said, here’s Glenn Greenwald, whom I have a little more respect for:
This is a very good @DouthatNYT column on why Bloomberg is so appealing to the rotted, craven Democratic establishment, and it’s particularly good on comparing the relative dangers posed by Trump and Bloomberg: https://t.co/2kKPpGqUV5 pic.twitter.com/OhL9B5l4Mw
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 16, 2020
Greenwald is right. This[1] is a very smart column.
[Michael] Bloomberg has adapted his policy views to better fit the current liberal consensus, and his views on social issues were liberal to begin with. But he has the record of a deficit and foreign policy hawk, the soul of a Wall Street centrist, and a history of racial and religious profiling and sexist misbehavior. More than any other contender, his nomination would pull the party back toward where it stood before the rise of Bernie Sanders and Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, and root liberalism once more in professional-class interests and a Washington-Wall Street mindmeld.[2]
Douthat also points to how as mayor of New York City, Bloomberg accomplished what Donald Trump can only aspire to as president and is thus, potentially, even more dangerous, concluding that his victory would amount to “[a]n exchange of Trumpian black comedy for oligarchy’s velvet fist.” Douthat does not think Bloomberg can win.[3]
I don’t believe it either. Even if Bloomberg were to win the Democratic nomination, he would be an elitist—a New York City mayor, for crying out loud—to authoritarian populists, would fail to advance a social conservative agenda, and would be a billionaire to the Left. He would rely on votes from a mythical “center,” but truth be told, on some level, pretty much everyone knows, on some level, that it was Wall Street that precipitated the 2007-2008 financial crisis. And everyone knows, on some level, that the bankers got away with fraud and are now even richer than before. Then there’s Charles Blow:
THREAD: 1. I’ve been railing against Bloomberg’s racist stop and frisk since 2009, almost as long as I have been writing my column. When the judge ruled it unconstitutional in 2013, she quoted one my column as the last lines of her decision…
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) February 16, 2020
2. I conclude with a particularly apt quote: “The idea of universal suspicion without individual evidence is what Americans find abhorrent and what black men in America must constantly fight. It is pervasive in policing policies — like stop-and-frisk, and . . .
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) February 16, 2020
3. “…neighborhood watch – regardless of the collateral damage done to the majority of innocents. It’s like burning down a house to rid it of mice.”
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) February 16, 2020
4. This is not a new fight for me. This is not a new fight for others warring against this policy, like the @aclu. We yelling that it was wrong. Bloomberg mocked us and continue.
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) February 16, 2020
5. Bloomberg: “I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It’s exactly the reverse of what they say. I don’t know where they went to school but they certainly didn’t take a math course. Or a logic course.”
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) February 16, 2020
6. I went to @Grambling1901, and I took a math class. It allowed me to calculate this…
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) February 16, 2020
7. There were “580,000 stop-and-frisks in the city in 2009. Most of those stopped (55 %) were black…most were yng and almost all were male. For reference, according to the Census Bureau, there were abt only 300k blk men btw the ages of 13 & 34 living in the city that year.”
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) February 16, 2020
8. Bloomberg knew these numbers was well as I did, and yet he persisted, with zeal. There young black and brown men were just collateral damage, the components of a criminal class.
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) February 16, 2020
9. So, when he says he didn’t know, or that he recently became aware, or whatever, it is ALL BS. And, it’s insulting. Say what you will about me, but I simply won’t be able to get over his callousness towards black bodies and black pain. Some of these were CHILDREN!!!
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) February 16, 2020
One of the lessons I’ve taken from talking with Blacks since arriving here in Pittsburgh is that to live with the incredible racism here[4] and yet still to function requires one of two responses: Either, as I think most Blacks do, one adopts a suspension of disbelief, or as some Blacks do, one buys into “respectability.” Bloomberg is relying on the latter, which Bill Cosby made himself the face of.[5] Cosby has since been convicted of sexual assault and labeled a “sexually violent predator” by a judge, requiring him to register as a sex offender for life.[6] I’m pretty sure that only gets you so far.
I think the message we’re respectfully sending to the DNC is fucking try us with Bloomberg and watch us burn this shit to the ground and look back at the embering ashes of the Democratic Party and smile because what was done was necessary.
— Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon) February 16, 2020
Ross Douthat, “The Bloomberg Temptation,” New York Times, February 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/opinion/bloomberg-trump-2020.html
- [1]Ross Douthat, “The Bloomberg Temptation,” New York Times, February 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/opinion/bloomberg-trump-2020.html↩
- [2]Ross Douthat, “The Bloomberg Temptation,” New York Times, February 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/opinion/bloomberg-trump-2020.html↩
- [3]Ross Douthat, “The Bloomberg Temptation,” New York Times, February 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/opinion/bloomberg-trump-2020.html↩
- [4]Colin P. Clarke, “One Year After Tree of Life, We Still Aren’t Talking Enough About Violent White Supremacy,” Rand, October 27, 2019, https://www.rand.org/blog/2019/10/one-year-after-tree-of-life-we-still-arent-talking.html; Eric Heyl, “Neo-Nazi, White Supremacist, Islamic Hate Groups Active In Pittsburgh,” Patch, August 16, 2017, https://patch.com/pennsylvania/pittsburgh/neo-nazi-white-supremacist-islamic-hate-groups-active-pittsburgh; Moriah Ella Mason, “Pittsburgh Doesn’t Need More Guns — We Need Less White Supremacy,” Forward, October 29, 2018, https://forward.com/scribe/413104/pittsburgh-doesnt-need-more-guns-we-need-less-white-supremacy/; Charles Thompson, “Pennsylvania housed 36 active hate groups last year, ranking 8th in the country: report,” Penn Live, February 21, 2019, https://www.pennlive.com/news/2019/02/southern-poverty-law-center-counts-36-active-hate-groups-in-pennsylvania-in-2018.html↩
- [5]Associated Press, “Cosby berates blacks for abuse, failure as parents,” NBC News, July 2, 2004, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5345290/ns/us_news-life/t/cosby-berates-blacks-abuse-failure-parents/↩
- [6]British Broadcasting Corporation, “Bill Cosby sentenced to state prison for sexual assault,” September 26, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45644374; Manuel Roig-Franzia, “Bill Cosby sentenced to 3 to 10 years in state prison,” Washington Post, September 25, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/bill-cosby-sentenced-to-3-to-10-years-in-state-prison/2018/09/25/9aa620aa-c00d-11e8-90c9-23f963eea204_story.html↩
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