Bloomberg Just Helped Every Other Candidate Prove They Can Humiliate a Thin-Skinned, Entitled Billio

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/bloomberg-gives-democratic-debaters-a-chance-to-showcase-their-billionaire-bashing-skills.html


Michael Bloomberg Just Helped Every Other Candidate Prove They Can Humiliate a Thin-Skinned, Entitled Billionaire
By Ben Mathis-Lilley
Feb 20, 20201:09 AM


Coming into Wednesday’s Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas, idiot pundits were mainly concerned with how Michael Bloomberg’s first performance would reflect on Michael Bloomberg. Stupid! It turns out the big story, Bloomberg-wise, was how well everyone else would come off while they dunked repeatedly and remorselessly on him in the course of exposing his candidacy as the vanity project of a low-charisma onetime Republican with a history of red-flag positions and behavior.

It started almost immediately as Elizabeth Warren jumped into a discussion of electability with a pre-packaged zinger that, unlike almost all pre-packaged debate zingers, actually drew some blood:

So 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. Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop and frisk.

snip//

After a subsequent discussion of Bloomberg’s wealth during which he said he had “worked very hard” for his multi-multi-billion-dollar fortune, Sanders noted to him, to oohs and aahs and oh snaps from the audience, that “maybe your workers played some role in that as well.”

It was a very hard night for Bloomberg, and a big part of why it was so hard is that the other Democrats were so sharp and confident in their criticisms of him. They weren’t flustered by his dismissive speaking style, or shaken by his poll standing and spending power, and they all seemed to find it easy to articulate (even during heated back and forths) why his record and personality were objectionable.

This should be good news for Democrats for two reasons. One is that, despite the intraparty sniping and snarking that is taking place during the primary, Bloomberg’s competitors demonstrated that they do, in fact, share common values which animate them more than their differences and can snap them quickly into a unified front. The other is that, in an environment in which Democratic voters have become obsessed with finding a nominee who can “stand up” to Trump, all five of the non-Bloomberg candidates on stage stood up to someone who shares a few of his most unsavory traits and came out as clear winners.

[zentrum]

1. Well said. He

...was really revealed.

[aikoaiko]

2. I agree.