He’s known for soda fights and opposing gun rights, and now he wants to be president, say sources. Well, in contrast to junk-food loving Donald Trump, at least we know there wouldn’t be any Big Gulps in the White House.
This intrepid nanny-stater is billionaire ex-NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg (shown) — whom I’ve affectionately dubbed Little Big Gulp (LBG) — and he has sung this song before. As New York magazine reports:
According to a New York CBS affiliate, Bloomberg has told associates that he is “revving up” to make a bid in 2020. But this time, there’s a twist: He’d be running as a Democrat.
Bloomberg has contemplated running in 2008, 2012, and 2016, and whether he’s serious this time is anyone’s guess. But the New York Post reported that, at a recent fundraiser at Cipriani 42nd Street — Bloomberg’s natural habitat — he told an adoring crowd, “Before you leave I want to get your cell-phone number because I’m thinking of getting the band back together.”
Bloomberg was a Democrat before he switched to the Republican Party to run for mayor in 2001; he then became an Independent in 2007, during his second term. He has long been a liberal on issues ranging from gun reform to climate change, and has drifted back toward the Democratic Party as the GOP has grown increasingly reactionary [read: anti-establishment], speaking at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 and announcing this month that he would pledge $80 million to back Democratic candidates in the midterm elections.
LBG’s motivation is, partially, Donald Trump. As CBS2 tells us, “A source close to the former three-term mayor says the move is fueled in part by regret that he didn’t stay in the race in 2016, because he feels he could have either won outright or prevented Donald Trump from winning.”
It also may be that Trump’s trumping of the establishment is an inspiration. Since his victory — which none of the people in question thought possible — other celebrities and Daddy Warbucks types now think it’s possible for them to replicate the feat. Oprah Winfrey, Mark Cuban, Howard Schultz, Kanye West, Mark Zuckerberg, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and comedian Chris Rock all have at some point suggested that they may seek our highest office. I guess that’s what happens when the Dunning–Kruger effect meets popularity delusion.
One asset LBG does have, other than $51 billion, is that he’s a flaming leftist who knows how to transcend party lines. In fact, changing political affiliation like clothes, he could be called transparty. Politically aware comedian Jackie Mason made note of this while commenting on the then-mayor’s presidential ambitions in 2007 (hilarious video below).
LBG said previously that he didn’t run for president because he realized be couldn’t win as an independent. Why not? Well, as the New York Times explained, “Scratch Bloomberg’s Surface, Find a Democrat.”
You needn’t scratch deeply, either. LBG is pro-LGBT; supports faux marriage and prenatal infanticide; and has been conspiring to thwart Second Amendment rights, launching a $50 million 2014 anti-gun effort. Moreover, he “doesn’t mind taxing the rich on their income or big companies on their carbon emissions … says that deporting illegal immigrants would destroy the nation’s economy … [and] is not necessarily averse to adding more bureaucrats to the government payroll,” the Times reported.
But what really epitomized LBG’s nanny-statism — and earned him his moniker — was his 2012 effort to ban many sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces. Ostensibly the goal was to fight obesity, though comedian Dennis Miller theorized that the diminutive mayor didn’t like Big Gulps because he “had to look up at the rim.” (Even the Taiwanese weighed in on LBG’s anti-sodaism. Funny subtitled video below.)
Donald Trump said in the past that he’d beat LBG — but he won’t have to. First, LBG is too left-wing to win as a Republican or independent, but not left-wing enough to pass muster in today’s radicalized Democrat Party. He also would run into today’s fashionable prejudice: He’s a white male.
Consider Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who just stunned the establishment by winning a primary race against the favored 20-year incumbent, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.). In part, she prevailed by playing the race card, essentially saying that no one should vote for a white man. It’s such a significant factor that the Washington Post ran the Wednesday headline, “The worst thing to be in many Democratic primaries? A white male candidate.”
The point is that cultural affirmative action reigns; the anti-white, group-politics-obsessed Democrat electorate desperately wants to see the first _______ president (woman, Hispanic, etc.) and virtue signal by being part of such history. And with LBG especially, can you imagine the talk of “white privilege”? The Left bemoans how today’s civilization was shaped by “dead white males” — well, they don’t want tomorrow’s shaped by live ones.
The only white man who could possibly transcend this would be a candidate devilishly attractive, charismatic, and demagogic — and two of those three qualities elude the ex-mayor.
