MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: JUST ANOTHER BILLIONARE

Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, is making a nationwide leap for the presidency, and it’s not good for democracy.

Bloomberg, at this point in his life, is a multi-billionaire businessman (he created the Bloomberg News media empire) and former politician. He’s kind of like Donald Trump, except he has an actual political career, he switched to the Democratic Party to run for the office, he’s possibly harassed even more women, and he has more money (which I don’t see as a good thing).  

As mentioned before, he was the (infamous) mayor of New York, 2002-13. His 12-year tenure came with some policy baggage that our country still discusses: He put “stop-and-frisk” practice into heavy use, a policy that gave NYC police the right to stop a “suspect” and search them under suspicion that they are carrying any illegal weapons or drugs. This is contradictory to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights – which gives protection from “unreasonable search and seizures” – and eventually stop-and-frisk was deemed unconstitutional by a judge.

The reason why stop-and-frisk is so controversial is because it mainly targeted African Americans and Hispanics. To this day, Bloomberg apologizes for the approach – but it doesn’t seem like he knows why he’s apologizing. The impact of that policy was huge on New York’s prison and criminal justice system, in a negative way. 

As of the last few weeks, Bloomberg is using his wealth to finance his campaign and pay for ads everywhere, and he’s gotten many media pundits on his side. And he was a boogeyman figure going into the Nevada Primary debate on Wednesday, Feb. 19 – but as I expected, all his skeletons came out of the closet.

Even though all six candidates on the debate stage took many attacks at each other, Bloomberg was the main target and it makes sense why. Every candidate – whether I agree on their proposed policies, or not – has campaigned hard since the beginning of the long campaign, and has fought for a stage spot in the many debates. And then, in comes a billionaire with a past full of controversy, and he essentially buys his way into the stage.

The outcome on Wednesday? Bloomberg, despite all the hype surrounding him from the media, faceplanted in his debate performance. 

Figuratively, he brought a wallet to a fistfight – he didn’t have the answers to defend his character or his best-known policy. I can’t think of an actual policy plan that he is running on, besides “I have a lot of money; therefore, I have a lot of influence to beat Donald Trump,” but it doesn’t work like that, because we have a society that can see more than the billion-dollar television/internet ads. We also have more knowledge on sexual harassment and assault on the corporate level now than at any moment in history, with Bloomberg being a part of that controversy.

Michael Bloomberg and his presidential campaign is everything that is wrong with American democracy, and that’s why he had no chance, even when he started for real in the race.