There are many reasons to not vote for Bloomberg, if you are a left leaning Democrat. He’s a Billionaire, he’s quite conservative, he used to be Republican and he was the biggest proponent of the obviously racist “stop and frisk” program that was employed overwhelmingly on black New Yorkers and he has already lived longer than the average male in the United States. Take your pick. I think he’s just an egotistical rich guy who jumped into the race when it became clear that a President Sanders or President Warren threatened wealthy people with having to pay their fair share of taxes and that such an administration was becoming increasingly likely. I’m sure he thinks of himself as a Savior who is the best qualified to right this ship of state and return it to the same course we’ve been on for decades, where the rich get richer and the poor get screwed. The trouble is, I don’t want to return to the course that got us here.
FWIW, I don’t think that he should even be in the race. If he truly thinks that it is up to him to save the country, then he should stop his vanity run and get behind another candidate or better yet, turn his resources into defeating Republicans and possibly flipping the Senate. I don’t think that he would make the worst President in the world, (that would be a tough record to beat!) and should he get the nomination, I will pinch my nose closed with my left hand while voting for him with my right but there are several claims that he has made in his ubiquitous, omnipresent ads that need to be addressed. For one thing, there is a twitter video up from Issac Mizrahi telling us all how LGBTQ friendly Bloomberg is.
Well that’s all fine and dandy because Bloomberg has made some nominal efforts on behalf of LGBTQ New Yorkers in the past. For example; in 2002 he signed a trans civil rights bill in New York City during his first year as mayor. But his position is far more nuanced than that. Bloomberg is on tape in 2019, whining about how trans rights are going to defeat the Democratic Party. In fact this video seems to be nothing more or less than deploring “the left” as being too far left:
“And so you can understand where somebody like Trump comes from,” Bloomberg said at the forum last year. “You can understand when you look at the Democratic Party, they are so far left that two years ago there was nobody on their side who would take these positions, and today virtually all the candidates for president of the Democratic Party are so progressive. I don’t know what progressive means.”
But it gets better. At 12:50 in this video posted below, Bloomberg waxes philosophical and tells us that Dems can’t get elected because people talk about things like “trans rights”. He makes it very clear that worrying about specifically trans rights is the anchor around the Democratic Party’s neck:
Did you hear? ‘He, she or it”. “It”, Mike? “Guy in a dress”, Mike? I’m sure everybody at that forum thought that you were being very sage and wise but I don’t. I think that you were being a bigoted asshole, who wants to jettison my civil rights for a shot at the Presidency. His campaign wasted no time responding:
“Mike understands that the transgender community has been under attack for decades and the advance of rights has not been equal. In April 2002, during his first year as mayor, Mike signed a sweeping transgender civil rights bill into law. His company provides comprehensive healthcare coverage for his transgender employees. As president, he has a comprehensive plan to secure rights for transgender Americans, including passing the Equality Act, ensuring transgender people have access to affirming healthcare and working to end the crisis of violence against transgender women. Mike is running to defeat Donald Trump and reverse the many policies he has implemented that attack the rights of the transgender community."
Yeah, that all sounds great, Mike but I can’t get past that “it” slur, nor the “guy in a dress” which is exactly the framing that North Carolina used to pass its abominable bathroom bill. Know what? I think that you honestly believe that you are an ally but you are too fucking clueless for words. Your words come from a place of white privilege so rarefied that you’re making pronouncements from on high couched in the language of a “benevolent” aristocracy. And citing 18 year old laws out of one side of your mouth while dehumanizing me and my existence out of the other doesn’t do it for me.
I’ve never been a fan of Bloomberg and he has always been kind of one step removed from Tulsi Gabbard but I think this moves him into a tie for dead last with her. He is either outright bigoted when it comes to trans Americans or inexcusably clueless and flippant. Nope. No to Mike.
Wednesday, Feb 19, 2020 · 10:03:31 PM +00:00 · MargaretPOA
Update: Well it looks like Bloomberg's campaign or possibly someone associated with it took the video down. What does that say about a candidate who can’t even own his words? Remind you of anyone? Starts with a "T” and rhymes with “dump”.