America’s perpetual presidential campaign is on the upswing, with Democratic national chairman Tom Perez wondering about how best to sort out an oversized candidate field that ranges from left to hard-left to even-harder left.
And then there is Mike Bloomberg.
The fellow formerly known as Mayor Mike has had big eyes for the Oval Office since forever but never quite could bring himself to — excuse the expression — pull the trigger.
This time, he’s 77, richer than Croesus, not at all bashful about spending his dough and clearly hearing the clock tick. There will be no next time.
So the question is whether America’s prepared to ditch full-fat donuts. Or, to paraphrase a reason he gave for not running last time, to see whether the country is ready to install a short Jewish man from New York in the White House.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that it is not. His New York address and identification with liberal causes have much more to do with it than his religion, though that’s a factor, too.
Then again, conventional wisdom couldn’t have been more wrong about another unlikely New Yorker two years ago: Donald Trump of Fifth Avenue, by way of Queens. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was inevitable — until she wasn’t.
Now the wise ones are suggesting that Trump is toast, which isn’t necessarily true, but the possibility is strong enough to attract an infantry platoon of folks happy to dance on Clinton’s (figurative, centrist) grave, most entering from stage left and most distinguishable from the others only at the margins.
Really. After the vaporware candidates — the likes of Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Beto O’Rourke of Texas or Cory Booker of New Jersey — are culled, what really differentiates former Vice President Joe Biden from Bernie Sanders of Vermont from Liz Warren of Massachusetts from Kamala Harris of California?
Rhetoric is all. They are from deep-blue states, they have virtually no executive experience — and they are poor as church mice.
Thus, the blue-state bit aside, Bloomberg is a singular presence: He is worth a breathtaking $51 billion going into the latest stock-market gyrations, and when it comes to spending on behalf of his perceived best interests, Scrooge he isn’t.
He dropped an estimated $110 million dollars trying to elect a Democratic Congress last month; while the effort was only partially successful, it couldn’t help but soften the intra-party ground for a Bloomberg presidential run.
Bloomberg also spent an estimated $300 million to become and remain mayor of the Big Apple, roughly 7-plus percent of his then $4 billion personal fortune.
Who’s to doubt that he is willing to spend proportionally to become president? If he does, that could amount to $4 billion, give or take, which would dwarf the estimated $2.9 billion spent on the entire 2016 campaign.
And it isn’t likely to stop there. Bloomberg just laid $1.8 billion on his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, to subsidize tuition-assistance programs. Good for him, but it is hardly coincidental that student debt is a pressing issue among young Democrats.
Nor is it likely that Bloomberg will be bashful about his gift, and perhaps others like it to come, as the campaign accelerates.
Of course, all the money in the world could guarantee nothing in a party obsessed with identity politics and now openly flirting with socialism. And that would probably go double for a fellow who became a Republican to run for mayor of New York, then a Democrat in anticipation of this race, and whose contempt for partisan politicians has been clear for years.
But few thought he could become mayor, either. Apart from the money, it took a series of unlikely events — among them, arguably, 9/11 — to make that happen.
Bloomberg was in Iowa this month, and last week he used his eponymous news service to detail, under the headline “Trump Rings in the New Year in the Worst Possible Way,” the president’s most recent sins. As former Mayor Mike sees them, of course.
Again, none of this necessarily adds up to anything, except this: In an American presidential race, $4 billion or $5 billion would be the functional equivalent of a multi-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile, if Bloomberg decides to deploy it.
And it seems he already has.
Bob McManus is a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post