Mike Bloomberg can erase the bad impression he made in the Nevada debate at the CNN town hall on Monday, February 24 and at the South Carolina debate the next evening by carefully calibrating his remarks about Sen. Sanders, the acknowledged front-runner in the field.
As I pointed out in my February 5 blog, Sanders and Trump are each disrupters appealing to disaffected Americans who feel left out and want to upend the American economic and government structures to right the wrongs that they believe have damaged them.
Sanders’ route to these changes is socialism (or “democratic” socialism as he prefers to call it, whatever that means) while Trump’s is capitalism in the economy with adjustment of government institutions to conform to his personal preferences on social issues.
“Taking on” Sanders in a purely adversarial manner should not be Bloomberg’s approach at either coming event.
First, to do so would avoid the striking victories Sanders has achieved thus far as no one seems to like him except the voters. Second, Sanders and his staff are unprepared to deal with any form of magnaminity from his primary opponents. His much-imitated (and successful) speaking style on the stump including orchestra-conductor arm movements and liberal use of paranoid finger are instinctively adversarial. That’s his practiced shtick.
I suggest that Bloomberg should say something like this:
“My hat’s off to Bernie for the solid victories in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. His appeal to much of the Democratic Party’s primary electorate is an impressive achievement and he ought to be proud of it.
“He’s a disrupter, calling out the system where he believes it has failed.
“I know how that feels. I started a company that created information technology in the finance world that gives needed data in real time, replacing an outmoded and defective system that I disrupted. Now that company is the leader in its field worldwide and I’m proud of it.
“But disruption cannot be an end in itself. I profoundly disagree with Bernie’s democratic socialist adventure: it is wrong for America; it will damage our chance to beat Trump; it threatens to destroy our majority in the House and to end our opportunity to take back the Senate; and it will never be approved by either a Democratic or Republican congress.”
Bloomberg needs to speak to the American people as a president would: incisively and honestly. His theme that he can both beat Trump and is prepared for the presidency by business experience and government experience in the “second toughest job” in America is surely right.
As to the “other” candidates on the stage in South Carolina, they have cheapened themselves with internecine attacks incompatible with the presidency.
Though speaking in sentences and paragraphs, Buttigieg’s attacks there were bare-knuckle and unattractive. Klobuchar, too, seemed nervous and unsteady suggesting a deep-seated “what am I doing here anyway” doubt.
Biden was shaky especially when calling the court-appointed monitor in the stop-and-frisk federal case a “moderator.” (His professed knowledge of everything and his protestations that he has “done it” are tiresome. He’s not that small that he has to make himself appear to be that big.)
Sure, politics is a blood sport. Less blood on Monday and Tuesday will help Bloomberg.