Bloomberg’s rise overshadows moderate Democrats’ victories
WASHINGTON — Wednesday, Feb. 19, may end up being remembered as a turning point in this year’s Democratic presidential race.
That night, the five remaining major contenders for the party’s nomination will meet in Las Vegas for a debate, and most bookies will give you good odds that former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will join them for the first time.
The rules for this debate qualify a candidate who wins 10% or more support in four national polls. Bloomberg has hit that mark in three polls so far in recent days, and a fourth seems likely over the weekend as pollsters release post-New Hampshire surveys.
Until now, Bloomberg, a billionaire many times over, has introduced himself to voters outside of New York mostly through a barrage of television ads paid for with a fraction of his immense fortune. A debate would, for the first time, allow voters to compare him directly with his rivals. A lot will ride on that first impression.
Bloomberg was everywhere and nowhere in New Hampshire in the days leading up to Tuesday’s primary. Voters talked about him, especially the many who were having trouble making up their minds; Sen. Bernie Sanders, the New Hampshire winner, growled about billionaires trying to buy the election; and pundits speculated about the impact he might have on the race.
He wasn’t on the ballot, of course, because of his decision to enter the race late and skip the opening contests.
That unorthodox gamble increasingly appears to have paid off. It allowed Bloomberg to avoid the intense vetting, up-close retail campaigning and repeated debating that the other candidates have gone through — none of which he’s known to be good at — while still figuring heavily in the conversation.
His strategy would have failed if former Vice President Joe Biden had won the first couple of contests, establishing himself as the presumptive nominee, or if another candidate had decisively beaten the field. But neither happened.
Instead, Biden’s campaign has nearly collapsed after he finished fourth and fifth in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Sanders’ victory Tuesday established him as the clear leader of the party’s left wing, eclipsing Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but his 26% in New Hampshire, just 2 percentage points more than
Pete Buttigieg won, hardly qualified as decisive.
And Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the surprise third-place finisher in New Hampshire, both get to advance to the next round, preventing any one candidate from consolidating the party’s center-left faction.
Buttigieg, 38, and Klobuchar, 59, both have several qualities going for them — youth, to begin with, compared with Biden, Sanders and Bloomberg, all of whom are in their late 70s.
Both, however, are short on money and a national profile. That will hamper them in just over two weeks when the competition shifts from small stages to a huge, national one, with 14 states from Maine to California voting March 3 in primaries that will allocate more than a third of the delegates to the nominating convention.
That has led many Democrats to focus — with either anticipation or dread, depending on their politics — on Bloomberg.
To voters and officials in the center-left, including many members of the House, Bloomberg appears as a champion who could fend off Sanders and successfully take on President Trump in the fall. On the party’s left, many decry that prospect as folly and worse — the surrender of the working man’s party to a plutocrat, a triumph of uppermiddle-class concerns over bread-and-butter economic issues and a turn away from demands for racial justice.
Amid all that, we still have very little evidence of how Bloomberg might fare as an actual candidate.
Since his entry into the race in late November, he has moved up steadily in polls. In national polling averages, he has pretty much caught up with Biden, whose standing continues to drop. A poll released Friday morning of likely Florida voters showed Bloomberg and Biden neck and neck, with Biden dropping and Bloomberg rising since late last month. Other recent surveys have shown him moving into the top three in North Carolina, Georgia and Arkansas.
But Bloomberg has only rarely had to answer questions, has avoided direct comparisons with other candidates and has just begun to undergo the scrutiny that a presidential candidate inevitably has to go through. His presumed ability to take on Trump stems from his three terms as mayor of New York, his success in business and the immense resources that has provided him — a fortune estimated at somewhere around $60 billion.
In recent years, he has contributed heavily to Democratic candidates and causes, especially to combat gun violence and climate change. He can claim to have significantly helped Democrats win control of the House in 2018. None of that says much, however, about his ability to campaign.
So many states have moved their primaries earlier this year that by midMarch, more than 60% of the delegates to the nominating convention will have been allocated. Before that happens, voters need to figure out whether Bloomberg is a rocket or a squib. Next week’s debate could offer the first chance to find out.