The Democrats’ exhausting search for a presidential candidate has been a free-fall through Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In the beginning were the aspirations of self-actualization: racial and economic justice, universal health insurance, combatting climate change, education reform. Now? Survival is all that matters. That means grabbing any warm body, regardless of how broken, who can beat Trump.
How many of us on the liberal spectrum could have imagined just four years ago supporting Mike Bloomberg for president? The guy is an arrogant billionaire, a former George W. Bush-backing Republican who, as a business owner and mayor of New York, indulged in racism, sexism and transphobia. But, hey, he is nowhere near as bad as Donald Trump. The same could be said for at least 75 percent of the country’s prison population.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren succinctly and accurately summarized our free-fall in last week’s debate when she noted that Bloomberg “has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop-and-frisk.” And then came the qualifier that perfectly captured our new normal: “Look, I’ll support whoever the Democratic nominee is.”
She is, of course, exactly right. Bloomberg would be the most flawed Democratic presidential nominee in modern history. But, regardless of his physical stature, “Mini Mike” would be head and shoulders above Trump. This is how far our civilization has crumbled since 2017. Elections used to be about dreaming of a better future. This one is about ending a nightmare so that we might dream again. Someday.
We Democrats have been smugly disdainful of the hordes of evangelical leaders and once-honorable Republican office holders who ignore the hard evidence of Trump’s utter moral depravity. His repeated lies, ignorance and trashing of laws and decency may make them cringe privately, but publicly they back him because he delivers on the political ends that matter to them: anti-abortion policies, conservative judges, tax cuts for the wealthy, and deregulation of almost everything.
Well, now it’s our turn to craft a Faustian bargain. Despite a dismal first appearance on the debate stage last week, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver reports that Mike Bloomberg remains very competitive in many Super Tuesday states. The billionaire has already spent $464 million of his own funds in his quest to capture the nomination of the party aligned against big-money corruption of politics. Will we ignore the millions of young black and brown men thrown against the wall and frisked by New York cops under Bloomberg’s unconstitutional policing policies? How about his criticism of minimum wage laws, or his defense of fingerprinting food-stamp recipients? Do we pretend he never ridiculed those who advocate for transgender rights, that he didn’t refer to women as “horsey-faced lesbians” and “fat broads”?
Put another way, would we support a candidate who has trampled on some, but not all, of our values in order to end the presidency of a megalomaniac who values absolutely nothing outside of himself? Of course we would. An election is not a completion test. It’s multiple choice. It’s about making the best deal that you can, not necessarily the one you want.
As abhorrent as some of the former New York mayor’s behaviors have been, as disqualifying as they would be in any other presidential election, if the package deal of Mike Bloomberg – a mixture of despicable negatives and considerable positives – is the price for ending our Trumpian nightmare, it’s a deal worth making. (Those positives, by the way, include 12 years of running – in a mostly competent fashion – New York City, an entity larger than 37 states; a strong climate change record; a proven commitment to using scientific research in enacting public policy; and philanthropic support of progressive causes such as public health and gun control.)
Bloomberg may well turn out to be little more than a supporting actor in this process, one whose quixotic presidential run loses steam in the spring primaries. Yet, his current standing as a major contender is but one more sign of how far we have fallen down the rabbit hole. In Donald Trump’s America, being a merely bad candidate is relatively good since the incumbent is horrendously terrible.
For example, Bloomberg was quoted by the Washington Post as saying the following at a New York event in March of 2019: “If your conversation during a presidential election is about some guy wearing a dress and whether he, she or it can go into the locker room with their daughter, that’s not a winning formula for most people.” Setting aside the fact that 76 percent of Democrats support transgender rights, this cruel, ridiculing remark would have ended a candidacy in that party in almost any other context.
In a forced choice between Bloomberg and Trump, however, the former comes off looking positively empathetic and supportive of human rights. Trump, after all, overrode his own Defense Department and banned transgender persons from serving in the military. His administration, through regulations and court cases, has gone after transgender and sexual orientation discrimination protections in a vast array of other contexts. (Here, here and here).
So it goes, this relativism of moral leadership. Bloomberg has made gross, sexist comments to women. Trump is on tape boasting about forcibly kissing them and grabbing their genitals. Dozens of women have accused him of sexual assault. Bloomberg may have stretched the truth from time to time. Trump, according to the Washington Post, told 16,241 lies in his first three years in office. Bloomberg got to serve 12 years as New York’s mayor by pushing the City Council to change the term limit rule. Trump has openly and flagrantly abandoned any pretense of following any rule of law.
Remember how hard it was four years ago to imagine that Donald Trump would actually be elected president of the United States? As we experienced that reality – and felt the earth tremble beneath us – nobody could ever have anticipated that Michael Bloomberg would emerge as our savior. Ultimately, that may not happen, but if it does, I will have my bumper sticker ready: “BLOOMBERG: NOT AS BAD AS TRUMP”. Inspirational? No, but it’s the damn truth.
(Inspiration for this post was provided by the hilarious musical parody, “The Day Democracy Died”, by The Founding Fathers. If you haven’t seen it, you can check it out here.)
Well said, Bruce! We have fallen. In so many ways.