Bloomberg is Dead! Long Live Bloomberg!


Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has been mayor of New York City for 12 years. As a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent, he’s long gotten a lot of love from centrist pundits who believe that Americans are tired of partisan wrangling and are eager to unite behind a guy whose sole dedication is to Getting Things Done™. Yesterday, however, his hand-picked successor suffered a big primary loss and his hand-picked issue of gun control led to a recall of two legislators in Colorado. Dave Weigel pronounces this the death of Bloombergism:

The New York election was a repudiation of Mayor Bloomberg. The Colorado election is worse—a defeat for Bloomberg the Icon. For half a decade or more, a certain sort of liberal, usually well-off, has convinced himself that the country he dreams of is possible, if only Bloomberg wills it. Bloomberg seemed to believe this too; his guru Kevin Sheekey interpreted polls about how many voters said the country was “off track” and demanded a third-party candidate to right it. After a bad Acela ride in 2012, Thomas Friedman asked Bloomberg to run for president and “challenge, and maybe even improve, both major-party presidential candidates by speaking honestly about what is needed to restore the foundations of America’s global leadership before we implode.”

The people who believed that on Monday probably still believe it. A couple of election losses aside, in a few months Bloomberg will be a private citizen with billions to spend on his political causes. That’s enough time to rethink this theory that you can ignore all critics, drop money from a helicopter, and expect to be forever proven right.

I wish I were so optimistic, but in the minds of the self-professed post-partisan Beltway chatterers, I suspect that Bloombergism can never fail, it can only be failed. They seem to be endlessly unable to figure out that when people say they’re tired of partisan wrangling, what they mean is that they want the other guys to stop being so damn unreasonable. When you dig an inch below the surface, it’s actually a desire for more partisanship, not less.

My great grandfather started life running a small-town Republican newspaper. Then he switched to being a Democrat, and then finally to being an independent so he could harass both parties equally. But he still died broke. Maybe someday Americans will decide to do without their parties, but that day is not today.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate