The debates among Democrats running for president have been noteworthy for all the wrong reasons. Most have been as exciting as watching paint dry, and the lackluster face-offs have produced an inconclusive muddle.
Heart be still, change is coming. The news that Michael Bloomberg has qualified and will join Wednesday night’s debate in Las Vegas is guaranteed to make for sharper contrasts.
Not because Bloomberg is a dynamic debater, which he’s not. Rather, his rapid rise in the polls will make him the favorite target of the five other contenders on the stage.
They will hit him and hit him again because they must. His ascent is a threat to each of them, and unless they at least manage to raise doubts about him, most will find their support and money tanking, forcing them to the exits.
Start with Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, both of whom already are sucking wind and cannot afford to be bystanders. Taking on Bloomberg is essential if they hope to earn a second look and stop their death spirals.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg have been climbing in the polls and early states, but Bloomberg is complicating their path forward by targeting many of the same voters and burying their messages with his barrage of television ads. If they don’t have an answer for his onslaught, they’ve probably hit their high-water marks.
Then there’s Bernie Sanders, the far-left front-runner and the only Democrat Bloomberg has attacked. The former New York mayor put out an ad criticizing the “Bernie Bros,” and an aide compared Sanders’ supporters to Donald Trump’s.
On Tuesday, another Bloomberg aide insisted that Sanders is the only rival who could win the nomination and beat Trump.
So the stage and stakes are set, but there’s another question, and for my money, it’s the most important: Which Michael Bloomberg will show up at the debate?
Will it be the one who dared to be something close to a nonpartisan mayor of New York and helped usher in a new Golden Age by tackling crime, teachers unions and even teen pregnancy?
Or it will be the Bloomberg who has apologized for stop-and-frisk, hides his critical support for charter schools and repeats his adopted party’s most rancid talking point, that Trump is a racist?
Back in October, when I urged Bloomberg to join the race before it was too late, my reasoning was that he would be a force for change in a party that was speeding too fast and too far to the left.
I cited as an example Warren’s job-killing policies and wrote that they “must be challenged by a credible candidate from within the party and Bloomberg is uniquely qualified for that role.”
And when he finally took the leap in November, I hoped he would run as “a no-nonsense mayor, executive and philanthropist” who “could honestly describe himself as a liberal with sanity, which is exactly what Democrats need.”
They still need it, with Sanders replacing Warren at the top but embracing the same or even worse policies. The problem now is, I’m not seeing much evidence that Bloomberg fits the description of someone who offers a clear alternative.
Indeed, to judge from his policy proposals, the party is changing him more than he’s changing the party.
His campaign website is chock-full of Big Government promises that echo the prohibitive giveaways of his opponents without exactly copying them. From issues like college tuition and student debt to climate change, tax hikes and health care, Bloomberg is proposing plans in which he’s mostly just shaved off the most extreme elements advocated by Sanders and Warren. He would do the same things, just a little bit less. That’s a distinction without much of a difference.
For example, he doesn’t mention reparations for black Americans, as the others do, but promises he will deliver “economic justice” and create “1 million new Black homeowners by providing down-payment assistance.” That certainly sounds like a race-based subsidy, as does the tab promising a “Path Forward for Latinos” and his support for Puerto Rican statehood.
Similar to Sanders and Warren, Bloomberg promises that two-year public colleges will be “tuition-free for all” and four-year colleges will be “debt-free for the lowest-income students.”
On the economy, he repeats a version of Democrats’ false claim that only the top earners are benefitting, saying that “economic growth is concentrated in a relatively small number of regions.”
That’s bull. Unemployment rates are historically low across racial and income groups, and the prosperity is being widely shared across the entire population. Why can’t he be honest about the Trump economy and offer a credible plan for added gains?
Bloomberg’s foreign policy page is little more than a list of international organizations on climate change that he joined. I saw no mention of his strong support for Israel, perhaps because he’s afraid to upset the anti-Semites in his new party.
Almost as distressing is his failure to mention his decisive support for charters, despite the fact that they are now some of the best public schools in New York and are allowing black and Latino students to close the racial achievement gap. Instead, in what smells like a gift to the teachers’ unions, Bloomberg says only that he supported “increased quality school options.”
Also notably, he boasts of falling crime rates, saying they fell 32 percent during his mayoralty, without acknowledging the important role that stop-and-frisk played.
Bloomberg often rationalizes using his enormous wealth in campaigns by saying it allows him to do what other politicians cannot because he does not have to solicit donations from special interests.
True, and his wealth could also exempt him from pandering for votes. And then he could be honest about his record.
Reform is road to ruin
Crime is up, squeegee men are back, graffiti is covering the subways — all while cops are writing fewer summonses.
A John Jay College study finds that cops wrote 48 percent fewer summons for littering, drinking or urinating in public, making unreasonable noise and violating Parks Department rules since the City Council decriminalized those offenses in 2017.
In plain English: the police don’t think it’s worth their time or, obviously, risking their lives for infractions the politicians don’t believe deserve real punishment.
The changes, which predated the no-bail lunacy, were called the Criminal Justice Reform Act. Which just proves that not all reforms are equal or even good.
Swinging for the cheats
The clamor for penalties to be levied against Houston Astros players for cheating is growing, with opposing players leading the charge.
Good. The only question is how baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred ever believed he could win public trust while exempting those who benefited most from the scam.
What was he thinking? Or was he thinking?
Headline ewws!
Problem, solution.
Headline No. 1: How Lifesaving Organs For Transplant Go Missing In Transit
Headline No. 2: Jars of preserved human tongues found in Florida home
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