We cats are not getting into this Sanders-Warren kerfuffle. It reeks of something that the Trumpsters want us to waste energy on. Let's just say that it's best we all focus on registering voters, fighting purges and suppression, making phone calls, knocking on doors and, when the time comes, GOTV. (Although we will take one moment here to point out that the female Presidential candidate in 2016 got three million more votes than the male candidate did. Okay, done.)
Then there's the question of money. Our political campaigns being what they are, it's an unavoidable topic. And that's where Michael Bloomberg comes in. Let us explain.
There have been times when we thought Trump was afraid of certain candidates on the Democratic side — such as when it came out that Benedict Donald was committing impeachable acts to manufacture dirt on Joe Biden. (More on that in his upcoming Senate trial... fun!) Now it appears to be Bloomberg's turn, with a recent Trumpian tweet that its author no doubt thought was clever to beat the band.
Our first take: Bloomberg will survive belittling nicknames. Our next take: Trump is worried about Bloomberg's money.
He should be. Michael Bloomberg has declared that even if he doesn't win the Democratic nomination, he's going all-out to defeat Benedict Donald in the fall. "He is simultaneously building out a general election machine...with a new structure — data, field organizing, advertising and policy — that aims to elect Democrats up and down the ballot," The Washington Post reports.
And just because Bloomberg is a (real) billionaire, don't assume that he doesn't care about stretching a dollar:
"His data operation...aims to incorporate expensive demographic and targeting data, parts of which can later be fed back into the [Democratic] Party's databases or repurposed for the broader fight against Trump and the Republicans," the Post explains. "The fact that he is a candidate gives him greater access to party data than he would otherwise have, and as a candidate he also benefits from lower television ad rates in swing states before their primary contests than he would if he simply advertised against Trump as a regular citizen."
This is a very canny move on Bloomberg's part — not just about the data, which will be critical, but especially given the amount of money he's throwing around. When he spends $100 million (which he's already done), it's the equivalent of a PAC spending about $140 million. That $40 million difference would pay for a healthy eight-week general election a buy for, say, all media markets in the entire state of Florida.
It makes no sense to run the government like a business. But it can be very smart to run a Presidential campaign like one. We're keeping our eyes on Michael Bloomberg. In the meantime, we've decided to PURR.
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