The lesson of the 2016 election and the first three years of the Trump presidency is that Democrats hate it when sexist, politically inexperienced, crude billionaires with a long history of racially inflammatory comments try to barge their way into national politics. Just kidding.
It turns out they only oppose these things in President Trump. The rise of Michael Bloomberg in the 2020 primary shows that Democratic criticisms of Trump’s character and qualifications are merely paper-thin attacks rife with hypocrisy.
The similarities between the two are eerie: They’re both crass, billionaire New York City businessmen turned politicians, with long histories of flitting among political parties. And despite claiming to hate all of these things about Trump, some Democratic voters and establishment figures are increasingly gravitating toward Bloomberg nonetheless.
The former New York City mayor is no longer a long shot by any means, breaking 19% to surpass Joe Biden and take second place in a new national poll, qualifying for Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate. Increasingly, the primary contest is starting to look like Bloomberg against Sen. Bernie Sanders, a showdown between part of the Democratic base’s ascendant support for socialism versus the old-school, big government crony capitalism Bloomberg embodies.
There’s already a coalition of notable Democrats behind Bloomberg.
From the dozen or so congressmen such as Rep. Ted Deutch who have endorsed him to governors such as Gina Raimondo, the same establishment Democrats backing Bloomberg have cried racism and sexism against Trump too many times to count. Heck, the Democratic National Committee even changed the debate qualification rules to Bloomberg’s benefit. Yes, it’s true that Bloomberg could collapse in the polls, but it’s too late for many of the Democratic establishment types who’ve backed him. They’ve already proved themselves total hypocrites.
They are essentially embracing a Trumpian figure in their party to try to take down the president. That’s not principled opposition — it’s partisan hackery.
After all, liberals claim to hate Trump in part because of his alleged sexism and misogyny. And they’re not entirely without basis, either, as the president certainly has a track record of blatantly sexist comments and does face serious allegations of sexual misconduct from numerous women. But the credibility of any Democrat’s complaint of sexism against this president is annihilated by support for Bloomberg.
The creepy, left-leaning billionaire has a long and disturbing history of sexism, which has likely only escaped widespread liberal media scrutiny because he’s a major Democratic donor. From telling a pregnant female employee to kill her baby, fostering a sexist environment at his companies, making lewd and crude sexual remarks about women, and using nondisclosure agreements to silence women who would speak out against him, the allegations against Bloomberg leave him with zero standing to tackle Trump’s sexism.
Similar hypocrisy exists on the front of racism, too.
Sure, there’s ample fertile ground to criticize Trump on this issue, from his woefully botched handling of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville to his offensive comments regarding a Hispanic judge. (Although, it’s worth noting that Trump’s presidential tenure has fared substantially better, in terms of minority relations, than his campaign did.) But how can Democrats credibly make that case against Trump by nominating Bloomberg of all people?
As mayor, and for years afterward, Bloomberg defended an overtly racist policy in stop and frisk, wherein random citizens (read: mostly black and minority men) could be stopped on the street and searched without adequate basis, civil liberties be damned. And now, clip upon clip is emerging of Bloomberg making comments about minorities and crime that, at the very least, perpetuate stereotypes. Democrats embracing Bloomberg would prove that their cries of Republican racism were motivated by partisanship all along.
Oh, and remember how Democrats and liberal media commentators cried “authoritarian” against Trump? (Not entirely without basis, given some of the things he proposed on the campaign trail, such as barring all Muslims from entering the country — as well as his defensive comments about Vladimir Putin and Communist Chinese rulers.) Well, there’s just about no politician in the American mainstream with a greater disregard for freedom and individual liberty than Bloomberg.
Do Democrats really think the way to defeat the supposed tyrant in the Oval Office is to elect Bloomberg, a wannabe tyrant who openly disdains the First Amendment, thinks poor people are too stupid to make decisions about their lives, and would ban everything from vaping products to large-sized sodas?
The Democratic Party can’t credibly argue that voters must abandon our supposedly offensive, racist, sexist billionaire president and replace him with… an offensive, racist, sexist billionaire president with a ‘”D” next to his name. Yet concerns about credibility aside, it increasingly looks like this might be what the party will try to do in 2020. Here’s hoping voters will make it pay the price for this hypocrisy.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect that Rep. Ted Deutch, not Rep. Ted Lieu, has endorsed Bloomberg.
