Bloomberg comes under attack in Democrat debate debut
NEW York billionaire Mike Bloomberg was savaged by his Democrat rivals on his first debate on the presidential campaign trail.
Mr Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who was once a Republican, was forced to defend his record and past comments related to race, gender and his personal wealth in a rocky debate stage debut in Las Vegas.
The tension reflected growing anxiety among candidates that the nomination fight could yield a candidate who will struggle to build a winning coalition in November to oust Donald Trump. Elizabeth Warren was in a fight for survival and stood out with repeated attacks on Mr Bloomberg. She sought to undermine him with core Democratic voters who are uncomfortable with his vast wealth, his offensive remarks about policing of minorities and demeaning comments about women, including those who worked at his company.
Ms Warren labelled Mr Bloomberg “a billionaire who calls people fat broads and horse-faced lesbians”.
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders lashed out at Mr Bloomberg’s policing policies as New York City mayor that he said targeted “African-american and Latinos in an outrageous way”. And former vice president Joe Biden alleged that Mr Bloomberg’s “stop-and-frisk” policy “threw five million black men up against the wall”.
Watching from afar, Mr Trump joined the Bloomberg pile on.
“I hear he’s getting pounded tonight, you know he’s in a debate,” Mr Trump said at a rally in Phoenix.
After the debate, Ms Warren told reporters: “I have no doubt that Michael Bloomberg is reaching in his pocket right now, and spending another hundred million dollars to try to erase every American’s memory about what happened on the debate stage.”
While Mr Bloomberg was the shiny new object on Wednesday, the debate also marked a major test for Mr Sanders, who is emerging as the frontrunner in the Democrats’ nomination fight, whether his party’s establishment likes it or not.
A growing group of donors, elected officials and political operatives fear that Mr Sanders’ uncompromising progressive politics could be a disaster in the general election against Mr Trump but they have struggled to coalesce behind a single moderate alternative.