Today, Explained - Ok, Bloomberg

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

Enter the Bloomberg! Exit the Bloomberg? (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. Twenty, twenty explain. Twenty, twenty explain. Last night, like many nights that came before it, there was a Democratic debate. But unlike the many nights that came before it, there was a new person on stage competing for the Democratic nomination, and he may as well have been a Republican. I don't think you look at Donald Trump and say, we need someone richer in the White House. Let's put forward somebody who's actually a Democrat. Actually, he used to be a Republican.

But maybe we should also ask how Mayor Bloomberg in 2004 supported George W. Bush for president. I'd like to talk about who we're running against, a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians. And no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mayor Bloomberg. Back in late November, when Michael Bloomberg announced that he would vie for the Democratic nomination, I spoke to Emily Stewart from Vox about his candidacy. The episode was called Can a Billionaire Buy the Presidency? So this morning,

I asked Emily how that's been working out for him. Well, we don't know if he will buy the entire presidency, but he can certainly buy himself some traction. He is gaining in the polls and, you know, everybody's kind of got some Bloomberg fever one way or the other right now, if you look at the news. And why is that? Why is everyone in a tizzy about Michael Bloomberg? He spent about $400 million on ads on television, digital, on the radio. Next year, we can have a leader who brings people together, solves problems, and gets results. Mike Bloomberg will get it done.

Mike Bloomberg is sort of everywhere you go. And at first, it was kind of like, eh, like, here's this guy who's a late entrant in the race. He doesn't seem to have a lot of chances. And then by the time January rolled around, it was really starting to become clear that he was gaining some traction in the polls. And then it seems like over the past couple of weeks, a lot of Democrats and progressives have freaked out about Mike Bloomberg. And there's a ton of opposition research on him. You know, he's a guy who was mayor of New York for 12 years.

He has said a lot of things, done a lot of interviews. He has a lot of baggage. And so, you know, whatever positive messaging he was putting out has also been countered by a ton of negative stuff about him. And that's all he's really done between November and now, is like blanket the country in ads? Yeah, I mean, he's also been out campaigning. He does do rallies.

He hasn't been campaigning in the first four primary states, so he is not in Iowa, not in New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina, but he's going to like Virginia, California, Pennsylvania. So his sort of plan is really to focus on Super Tuesday, which is March 3rd when a bunch of states vote. So he has been out on the trail, but the main strategy is just inundate everyone with Mike Bloomberg everywhere. I like Mike. I like Mike. I like Mike. I like Mike. I like Mike. I like Mike. Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama work together. I know Mike is not afraid of the gun lobby.

I know my story would have turned out very differently if I had been black. I like about Mike that he loves America. I'm Mike Bloomberg, and I approve this message. And it's working. His poll numbers are going up. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the real clear politics average of national polls, he's third right now, pretty far behind Bernie Sanders, who's the front leader, but pretty close to Joe Biden, who was for a long time considered to be the front runner. But he looks like he's doing pretty well in different states.

And he had to match up with Trump, too. There was a poll not too long ago out of Michigan that put different Democrats against Trump. And Bloomberg was the one who did the best. And I guess it's official now that Trump sees him as something of a threat because he like made up a nickname for him, right? Yeah, he calls him Mini Mike Bloomberg. And, you know, these are guys who've known each other for a long time. It's clear that Trump is a little bit annoyed by Bloomberg. You know, here's a guy who is much

richer than Donald Trump. He has more than $50 billion in estimated net worth. He runs a giant company, a giant philanthropy operation. So Trump has taken notice of this. And I'm sure they have a long history here in New York, not necessarily as enemies, but they've known each other for a long time. And Bloomberg is definitely on the president's radar. There's that photo of like him playing golf with like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. And who else is in it? Like Joe Torre, Billy Crystal, Mr. Potato Head, Woodrow Wilson. That was some sort of like philanthropy thing or foundation

thing. I mean, they've really known each other for a long time and I'm sure socially as well. Is Bloomberg's success in the Democratic race coming at the expense of someone else? Is it Biden who's suffering as a result or who? Well, I think part of it is Biden. Before Bloomberg jumped in, I had heard from people that basically he decided not to run in the first place because it looked like Joe Biden had a pretty good shot at the White House. And then when he came into the race, it did seem like that was a sign that he and his very rich friends who probably were into a Biden presidency as well were worried about the former vice president's prospects. But, you know, I think there's also just a really fractured, non-Bernie vote right now, whether it's Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar or even Elizabeth Warren.

Like, he's kind of drawing from everywhere, I think. If you are not into Bernie Sanders or you are worried about his electability, your voters are looking kind of wherever they can. And Bloomberg is on their television screen. And until recently, you know, people are only hearing really positive messaging about him. And so he's kind of been drawing from everybody, it seems like. Let's talk about that debate.

It was a real kind of firing squad around Mike Bloomberg last night. The fact of the matter is, he has not managed his city very, very well when he was there. He didn't get a whole lot done. He had to stop and frisk, throw in. There were a lot of little shots being taken. And then there was a really, really long, big shot taken by Elizabeth Warren that the moderators seemed to just let roll for like three or four minutes. The mayor has to stand on his record. And what we need to know is exactly what's lurking out there. He has gotten some number of women, dozens, who knows, to sign non-disclosure agreements

both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace. So, Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those nondisclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story? Bloomberg could ostensibly release people from the nondisclosure agreements, and he has refused. And he really doesn't have a good answer on that. None of them accused me of doing anything other than maybe they didn't like the joke I told. And let me just and, and let me put, there's agreements between two parties that wanted to keep it quiet, and that's up to them.

They signed those agreements, and we'll live with it. So wait, when you say a deception, I just want to be clear. Some is how many? I mean, I think that heading into last night, like if you would have asked me who I thought would probably go after Mike Bloomberg most, it was going to be Elizabeth Warren. Here's a guy who really is emblematic of everything that she kind of abhors in American capitalism and society.

It is a question of values. Do we want to invest in Mr. Bloomberg or do we want to invest in the entire generation of young people? It seemed like he may have been caught a little off guard by the NDA question, especially by the confrontation to release these women from their NDAs. But he had to have been expecting stop and frisk to come up. And that came up from the moderators themselves. How do you do there? It seemed like it was a similar situation where he knew it was coming, but still he really hasn't developed a good answer on that. And I've sat down with a bunch of African-American clergy and business people to talk about this, to try to learn.

I've talked to a number of kids who'd been stopped. And I'm trying to, I was trying to understand how we change our policies so we can keep the city safe because the crime rate did go from 650, 50% down to 300. So Bloomberg kind of half apologizes, and I think he gets called out for that by Elizabeth Warren anyway. Then the apology has to start with the intent of the plan as it was put together and the willful ignorance day by day by day of admitting what was happening, even as people protested in your own street, shutting out the sounds of people telling you how your own policy was breaking their lives. You need a different apology.

Senator, thank you. It seemed like every time someone brought up something from Michael Bloomberg's past last night, he didn't really have much to say that was satisfying. And it seemed like being on that stage probably didn't help him a ton. But also, you know, who knows? Yeah, he was bad last night, but he can drop $100 million more on ads today and could try to erase it. And that was a point Elizabeth Warren made in an interview last night after the debate.

So we kind of are just going to have to see as the polls start to come out what happened. And of course, we really won't know how he's doing until he's actually on the ballot in Super Tuesday. More in a minute. I'm Sean Ramos for them. This is Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Thank you. pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank,

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All right, so Mayor Mike kind of got eviscerated on the debate stage last night, but will it matter? Do debate performances affect the outcomes for candidates? That is the question. And I asked political science professor Julia Azari. So there's actually a pretty big literature in political science and communications going back to the 1980s that suggests that they do. So in primaries where you don't have party labels

to help you locate candidates, it does seem like the kinds of very attuned and engaged people who watch debates do take something away from them about the candidates. What we don't know is how long those effects last or exactly what they look like in a very crowded primary like this one. Right. Let's talk about this primary because it felt sort of distinct that there were so many people on stage, especially in the outset where these debates seemed like they weren't even good at getting to the crux of any issue because so many people had to weigh in and there was such little time afforded each candidate. How did that affect in your eyes the effectiveness of these debates? So I think there's a couple of things going on in a debate. And one is like people do tune in, I think, like you said, to get to the crux of an issue to like hear back and forth and like serious proposals about an issue. And that's great. But as you said, that's very unlikely to happen in a stage with 10 people. But it's also for some of these candidates

to show themselves and be imagined by voters as president. I think that's it. It's also for some of these candidates to show themselves and be imagined by voters as president. I think that's a very slippery concept, so it's hard to pin down and maybe underappreciated. But a lot of what candidates are doing is they're trying to present themselves in a way that voters can see them in that role and make that intellectual leap from this person who's a politician in another office or a media person or a business person to see them in this office that in our politics is like no other. Debates offer an advantage to candidates who aren't as well known. I think we've seen that in a couple of cases. They have helped some of these lesser known candidates break out, not all of them, obviously. And it does, I think, allow these candidates to sort of show what would they look like on a debate stage with Trump? What would they what would they look like

at a podium? And this is very superficial, but this is TV we're talking about, right? What would they look like? What would they sound like? What were the what would their words sound like if they were delivering the State of the Union and kind of helps people make that leap of imagination. I mean, as someone who's watched every single one of these debates, a thing that's always surprised me was that someone perhaps that people could find the easiest to picture as president, Vice President Joe Biden, seemed to really struggle in these debates. He'd say strange things. He would ramble. He kind of got laughed at several times. And yet it never seemed for a long time to affect him in the polls. Is that because the people who watch these debates aren't the people who are being polled?

I mean, maybe. I think that some of it is just the people's attitudes about Biden are sort of baked in. If you're a Democratic primary voter and you're thinking, you know, what I want is someone with experience, someone who reminds me of the Obama administration, and that person is going to be older almost by definition, then you're kind of like, okay, that's Joe Biden. And, you know, he's always kind of had funny verbal statements. That's who he is. So you're probably fine with that. If you're,'re again if you're a highly engaged voter i also think that biden's support in the primary polls was driven somewhat by name recognition so we'll see i don't want to speculate about what's going to happen in the next couple of primaries it's possible that biden will do really well but we are living right now as we're

recording this in a moment where biden has been kind of front runner, but not by that much, and then has had a really rough time in New Hampshire and Iowa. So it's possible that what we're getting there is kind of soft support in the polls and that some of the drawbacks and concerns that people have about Biden's candidacy were kind of lurking in those debates. What about people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who are maybe, unlike Biden, pushing the party a little bit more to the left, who are recognizable, who seem to kind of hit the notes you'd expect them to hit throughout all these debates? Did the debates help them in any way? Yeah, I mean, I think maybe. I think that Warren generally in these debates has sort of done her thing where she hasn't really dominated the spotlight.

Most of the time she's had answers that were basically on topic and where she's prepared. I think there have been a few times, especially in areas where Warren isn't as strong like foreign policy, where that's maybe been a little bit of a liability for her because her whole appeal is around preparation. I also think that the confrontation between her and Sanders over sexism was a very interesting moment. And, you know, there have been opportunities for the two of them to have conflict in the earlier debates, and they mostly resisted doing so. So I think that the debates have provided people a way to look at how the left wing of the party is developing? Is this going to be a faction where you have multiple candidates that were capable of coalescing and working together? Or is this mainly about competition between Warren and Sanders for that left lane? And I think that question is still open. How much does Bloomberg sort of upset the conventional logic

about how important these debates are? I mean, he's a candidate who clearly came in thinking he could buy the nomination, and then over the months that followed, he sort of proved that that was a distinct possibility. And, you know, last night he showed up on the debate stage for the first time and had surged without even showing up to one before. Does he sort of upset the conventional wisdom in any way? I think that Bloomberg is sort of challenging

the conventional wisdom generally about what it means to enter the primary late. On the one hand, there's the suggestion that he has run ads that are effective and they're saying what Democratic voters want to hear. They come out and tell a very strong story against Trump. And on the other hand, there are complaints, you know, he's sort of buying the primary, buying support, buying endorsements. Voters have been wondering, it seems like, about some aspects of Bloomberg's record as mayor, as a business person, about accusations of sexual harassment and inappropriateness, as well as about stop and frisk as a policy. And last night he had to answer those as a presidential candidate on a debate stage with other presidential candidates. And it didn't go very well. And I guess we'll have to

wait and see whether it affects him at all. We only have one more Democratic primary debate. And I think, like, I got to admit, despite getting repetitive and being a little frustrating at times, I'll miss these debates. It was nice to hear all of these people talking about the most important issues in this country every few weeks. But, I mean, next time around, should we have more, fewer? Just do them differently? Oh, man, that's a good question. I mean, here's what I would like to see.

I think the number of debates is fine. There's, like, nothing you can say that won't make people mad because we should have a debate. We should have a debate every day, every hour. We should have a couple of debates, however many we've had. They should be at a time when people will watch them and they should be different. What I want to see in debates is like a little bit of variation. So maybe have one kind of signature debate where it's more general. And if people are going to watch one debate, they can watch that debate. But what concerns me is it's sort

of like this broken record of the candidates having the same exchange over and over again. And on the one hand, that's great if you missed the debate or whatever, and you can watch the next one, it'll be the same. But on the other hand, I think that that really runs the risk of disengaging people and making it seem like these are politicians with talking heads and with talking points and we never really progress. But I would have to look at the data and see how many people are like us and watching them all. Julia Azari is a political science professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Actually, it's pronounced Miliwake, which is Algonquin for the good land. I was not aware of that. I think one of the most interesting aspects of Milwaukee is the fact that it's the only major American city to have ever elected three socialist mayors. Does this guy know how to party or what? Huh?

Huh? Huh. OK. Well, we got to get going.