Thursday February 13, 2020; 9:54 AM EST
- Joan Walsh who I admire for being a listener, a rare thing among pundits, wants Bloomberg on the debate stage. She imagines that his opponents would tear him apart over things he said about racial profiling and red zoning in past decades. So many things to say about that.#
I heard former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter, a contemporary of Bloomberg's as mayor of NYC, on NPR yesterday. He's black. They were trying to get him to say Bloomberg was wrong and bad or whatever, but he wouldn't. He said plainly that the violence problem in his city was with black and Hispanic young men, and it was probably the same in NYC. They were the ones walking around with guns. The cities were desperate to get those guns out of their hands. #- Joy Reid, on MSNBC on Tuesday night, who is also black, said that blacks have only ever felt passionately about one candidate, Obama. Otherwise they make pragmatic choices. They want to get rid of Trump. They'll choose Bloomberg if they think he's the best way to do that. That's how I vote too, I try to do it always, pick the candidates who would best do what should or must be done. #
- OK so Bloomberg is on the debate stage. Each candidate, except perhaps Sanders, is thinking, if I'm the nominee, I'm going to need his support. They aren't likely to go for the jugular. Think of Bloomberg not just as a candidate, but also as a Democratic Koch or Adelson. If he isn't the nominee the Bloomberg PAC is going to play a big role in Democratic politics. #
- If Bloomberg were just throwing money at this it wouldn't work. But it is working. He thinks creatively, is willing to risk not just his money but his reputation and legacy. He's doing the marketing that the Democrats have failed to do for generations. He is so smart, most billionaires want to hold on to their money, which is ridiculous, given how short life is and how old they are. He's using his money for good, now -- and that imho overshadows every past sin he has been accused of and is likely to be accused of. It doesn't eliminate them, but they have to be considered against the good he is doing, which imho is enormous. He's a gift horse and go ahead and look if you must, but he should keep going in the meantime. #
- A creative idea. Bloomberg could offer say $50 million to any still-running candidate, to be used for advertising to position against Trump, now, no strings attached. #
- Bloomberg is not just a candidate. He's doing the marketing, actually just starting to, that the Democrats have failed to do, ever. All the while the Republicans have mastered it. The Democrats are so unaware of this, they don't even see it. So when they look at Bloomberg they only see what they know to look for. A horse in a race. But he's a developer, working on defining media and politics for the world of 2020. He's going to test every assumption we have about how campaigns work, and that itself will be incredibly valuable. Let's pay close attention. #
- He's also working in advance of Trump, who hasn't yet managed to shut off political advertising of his opponents. This door should be shoved wide open in the most captivating way possible so when and if he shuts it down, people will miss it. #
- When Steve Jobs came along he looked at computers differently from the way IBM did. He looked for assumptions that could be broken and the result was the Apple II. When we got blogging and podcasting going, again we looked for assumptions of print journalism and radio that could be broken and it worked. We haven't yet done that for politics. Not just money-raising, that was solved in 2004 by Howard Dean and Joe Trippi. Actually doing politics effectively without being controlled by trolls using the networking technology of today. Bloomberg, a master of tech and media, is probably the best person in the world to try to do this right now. That's what journalism is, predictably, missing. #
- There was Bartlet for America, which begat Dean for America, now we need to be more specific -- politics for the rest of us. ;-)#
- Update: President Bloomberg, really a Democrat?#