By Howard M. Riell
Michael Bloomberg wants Jewish votes and donations, and so he has launched
United for Mike, which targets Jews.
On Sunday, his team officially introduced the program at the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center in Miami. Its director will be author Abigail Pogrebin.
Many have argued that the Democratic approach of targeting individual demographic groups is divisive, but Bloomberg apparently knows he must work within the Democratic template. He hasn’t generated a lot of enthusiasm.
As The Economist noted dryly: “Mr Bloomberg has run for office as a Republican, as an independent and now as a Democrat. In a country where voters often claim to want bipartisanship but usually vote as if the other lot are rogues, this is risky. Mr Bloomberg has pitched himself as a counter-weight to left-wingers such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who he says are “not well-positioned” to defeat President Donald Trump. He has outlined an ambitious, leftish policy agenda while disavowing Medicare for All, the signature health-care proposal on the left of the party. Mr Bloomberg might yet become the Democrats’ pick for the White House, but the odds are slim, and his campaign will first have to overcome a problem: currently voters dislike him more than any of the other serious candidates running for president. He is a lot more unpopular than Mr Trump.”
Even the left-leaning publication The Hill doesn’t think much of his candidacy. As they reported recently, “For most Democrats, rightly fixated on beating Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg’s campaign for President is about the last thing they need. The bitter irony is that Bloomberg, a mega-billionaire, lifelong Republican, and New York conservative, has no chance of actually winning this year’s populist-leaning Democratic nomination himself. But his candidacy holds a host of dangers for Democrats and could complicate their efforts to defeat Trump.”
Bloomberg grew up in Medford, Massachusetts and attended Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School. He began his career at the securities brokerage Salomon Brothers, before forming his own company in 1981 spending the next twenty years as its chairman and CEO, according to Wikipedia. “He is the co-founder, CEO, and majority owner of Bloomberg L.P., a global financial services, software and mass media company that bears his name, and is known for its Bloomberg Terminal, a computer software system providing financial data widely used in the global financial services industry. As of November 2019, this made him the 9th richest person in the United States and the 14th richest person in the world; his net worth was estimated at $58 billion. Since signing The Giving Pledge whereby billionaires pledge to give away at least half of their wealth, Bloomberg has given away $8.2 billion.
