From Robert Frank’s February 10th article at cnbc.com:
Bloomberg is worth about $60 billion and is self-funding his campaign to be president. The former three-term New York mayor has spent more than $250 million on TV and radio ads and $45 million to $50 million on digital — more than twice that spent by Trump and all the other Democratic candidates combined, according to Advertising Analytics and Acronym.
Following the Iowa caucuses — in which former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders finished ahead after a counting process riddled with inconsistencies — Bloomberg’s campaign announced plans to double its spending.
More than twice as much as every other candidate, including the incumbent President, and about to double its spending?
If that isn’t buying the nomination, what is?
Now: how much spending will it take to overcome the audio and video of Bloomberg aggresively defending “stop and frisk”, flipping out the claim that 95% of crime is committed by 16-25 year old minorities, and assuring an audience that the way to deal with it is to “throw them up against the wall and frisk them”.
Forget whether you agree or disagree with “stop and frisk” policing; if you were Black or Latino, how would you feel about the language Bloomberg used? The casual “95%” and “throw them up against the wall” references to your children?
Bloomberg can apologize and spend every day from now until doomsday, but that will still resonate among minority communities – both Black and Latino; communities that, without massive support and high turnout, neither he nor any other Democrat can win the presidency.
And don’t think for a second that, once they get him on a debate stage (if he ever shows up at one) other Democrat contenders won’t nail him with this before Trump ever needs to. Again, all the money in the world won’t get rid of this, because that is his voice saying those words.
Presidentially, that makes Michael Bloomberg a dead man spending.
