Left Wing Media Sounds Alarm as ‘Right Wing Authoritarian’ Mike Bloomberg Surges in 2020 Race
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Left wing news outlets and magazines are sounding the alarm as Mike Bloomberg’s 2020 campaign began dominating the news cycle and gaining in polls this week.
On Tuesday, The Week’s Ryan Cooper called Bloomberg “a right-wing authoritarian with nakedly racist views” in a piece warning of his candidacy, and the New Republic’s Osita Nwanevu warned that a Bloomberg nomination would be “nothing less than a self-destruct button for the Democratic Party.”
“The constituencies that would align themselves, loudly, against his coronation would include the demonstrators of Black Lives Matter and other groups who’ve brought national attention to the racism of our criminal justice system since the Ferguson protests of 2014, as well as the progressive movement’s erstwhile campaigners against money in politics,” Nwanevu predicted. “They would be joined by ordinary Democrats who simply deplore the Republican Party to which Bloomberg once belonged and, Emily’s List notwithstanding, many of the women who’ve spent the Trump era demonstrating against sexism in politics and in our political and professional lives.”
“All told, these factions comprise the majority of the Democratic party’s activist base,” Nwavenu noted.
At the same magazine, Alex Pareene spoke of Bloomberg’s “polite authoritarianism” and “callous indifference to civil liberties.”
Also on Tuesday, the Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent argued that a Bloomberg nomination would “deeply stain Democrats’ claim to being the party arrayed against big-money corruption of our politics.”
“No Dem should accept a scenario in which @MikeBloomberg’s personal fortune overwhelms @BernieSanders’ paradigm-shifting grassroots fundraising success,” Sargent wrote in a tweet linking to his piece.
No Dem should accept a scenario in which @MikeBloomberg‘s personal fortune overwhelms @BernieSanders‘ paradigm-shifting grassroots fundraising success.
I’ve asked the Bloomberg campaign if they will rule out him bankrolling ads against Sanders. No answer:https://t.co/Dv4iTfCst4
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) February 18, 2020
Last week, The Nation’s Jeet Heer wrote, “Bloomberg is a perfect example of our age of plutocracy. He is completely unashamed about using his wealth to buy political office, having already spent well over $300 million of his own vast fortune on his presidential bid.”
It wasn’t the first time Heer went on the offensive against Bloomberg. He also compared the billionaire to President Donald Trump in another article, and claim that if he were chosen as the Democratic nominee, the election “would be reduced to an insult match between two vainglorious plutocrats trying to unnerve the other with calumny.”
“The best role Bloomberg can play in the election is as a stand-in for Trump himself. In the primaries, Bloomberg is well-suited for the Trump role, having the requisite wealth, arrogance, and propensity for personal insult,” Heer continued. “Sanders and Warren can use him as a foil and hone their debating skills for the confrontation one or the other might have with Trump in the fall.”
Jacobin even questioned which candidate would be worse: Bloomberg or Trump.
In an article titled, “Michael Bloomberg Isn’t a Smug Technocratic Centrist. He’s Something Far Worse,” Ross Barkan argued last week that as an “admirer of dictators, a lowbrow misogynist, [and] an unfiltered bigot,” Bloomberg “is the only Democratic contender who might actually be worse than Trump.”
The magazine has also described Bloomberg’s campaign “an insult to democracy,” with writer Luke Savage declaring, “you can have billionaires or you can have democracy — and, as long as you have the former, you can expect the latter to be perpetually compromised.”
Vice has called Bloomberg “the billionaire no one likes,” and Salon has published articles warning that “an oligarch is trying to buy the presidency.”
