Bloomberg’s money won’t help him win

Bill Press says that all the money in the world won’t help Bloomberg become a viable presidential candidate.

In the ninth Democratic presidential debate this week, there were two Michael Bloomberg’s on display. The first was poised, confident, and downright presidential. Of course, I’m talking about the Bloomberg who appeared in the 60-second “Bloomberg for President” commercial that appeared in the debate’s second hour.

The other Bloomberg, the one on stage, was anything but poised, confident, or presidential. He was flustered, hesitant, and stunningly unprepared to respond to attacks on his record that everybody knew were coming. Too bad Bloomberg didn’t devote $10,000 of the $339 million he’s spent so far on a good debate coach. He obviously needed one.

There’s no doubt Bloomberg would show up with a big target on his back. Not only did he jump in late, after having initially announced he was not going to run; he chose to snub the first four state outings, while spending more of his own money on slick TV ads than all other candidates combined. Then he had the audacity to suggest that, since he was the only Democratic alternative to Bernie Sanders and the only Democrat with enough money to beat Donald Trump, all other candidates should drop out of the race before Super Tuesday — before even one vote had been cast for Bloomberg — leaving the field to him and Bernie.

The stage was set for pile-on Bloomberg, and it wasn’t long in coming. At the opening bell, Sanders pivoted from explaining why he should be the nominee to attacking Bloomberg’s “outrageous” stop-and-frisk policy while mayor of New York. At which point, Elizabeth Warren — who clearly had the best night of all — jumped in with a withering attack on Bloomberg’s past sexist comments. “I’d like to talk about who we’re running against,” she teased. “We’re running against a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians. And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump.” Ouch! It was all downhill after that.

Before the debate, everybody knew that Bloomberg, making his first appearance as a candidate, was going to be hit with three issues: stop-and-frisk; his enormous wealth; and his longpast, but just-released, racy comments about women. Apparently, everybody knew that but Bloomberg himself, who seemed blindsided by all three.

Although he did admit that stop-and-frisk was what embarrassed him most about his tenure as mayor and, kind of, apologized for it, Bloomberg insisted he cut back its use once he realized it had gone too far. But both Biden and Warren countered that, latter-day apology or no, Bloomberg still pursued a policy of, in Biden’s words, “throwing close to five million young black men up against a wall.”

On his immense wealth, Bloomberg proved stronger, pointing out he was the only one on stage who’d started a business and admitting that yes, he’d worked hard and made a lot of money, but now he was giving it away and willing to spend a huge pile of it to defeat Donald Trump. But that didn’t erase the charge, leveled by every other candidate, that he was, in effect, trying to buy the nomination of a political party he didn’t even belong to until recently.

What hurt Bloomberg the most was how he dealt with his hateful comments about women. The audience groaned when he dismissed complaints of Bloomberg female employees as women who merely “didn’t like a joke I told.” Things got worse when he rattled off a list of women in top jobs at Bloomberg, which Warren’s killer instinct immediately charged amounted to nothing more than saying “I treated some women well.”

But the real coup de grace was Bloomberg’s clueless response to the question of nondisclosure agreements. He would, or could, not say how many women had signed them and he stubbornly refused, despite prodding by Biden and Warren, to release women from agreements they’d signed. Yet again, allowing Warren, to deliver the fatal blow: “We are not going to beat Donald Trump with a man who has whoknows-how-many nondisclosure agreements and the drip, drip, drip of stories of women saying they have been harassed and discriminated against.”

Michael Bloomberg did get one thing right. “I think we have two questions to face tonight,” he said. “One, who can beat Donald Trump? And number two, who can do the job if they get into the White House?”

“I am the candidate who can do both of those things,” he concluded. Maybe so. I don’t believe it. A lot of my friends do. But, if so, Bloomberg sure didn’t show it in this debate.