 |
| Bloomberg takes on Trump |
TV isn't dead.
First, notice the obvious: TV made Donald Trump a celebrity.
Second, notice the 2016 election: A lot of Americans are OK with wealth.
Trump was a celebrity when he came down the elevator. He was host of a TV show, The Apprentice, for fourteen seasons. He had appearances in eleven movies and fourteen TV shows, appearing as himself, the archetype New York tycoon.
He had a brand.
He got there primarily from being on TV. Fox News developed a special relationship with Trump, allowing him to call in every Monday to converse with Fox & Friends hosts beginning in 2011. "Mondays with Trump," they called it.
He got there primarily from being on TV. Fox News developed a special relationship with Trump, allowing him to call in every Monday to converse with Fox & Friends hosts beginning in 2011. "Mondays with Trump," they called it.
During 2015 and 2016 he said brash, sometimes offensive things, developing his brand as a tycoon Archie Bunker, happy to troll Barrack Obama. Cable news audiences would watch the Trump schtick. He was interesting.
Enter Michael Bloomberg. He has spent some $270 million dollars on TV ads, so far, with much more to come. It has moved the needle and brought him up to approximately 8% in national polls, in the range of Buttigieg and Klobuchar. Bloomberg is reaching "top tier" status.
 |
Click HERE. 30 second ad |
Elizabeth Warren disapproves, and she leads among Democratic candidates in drawing the distinction between her campaign and the campaign of Bloomberg:
"I don't believe that elections ought to be for sale. And I don't think that as a Democratic Party that we should say that the only way you're going to get elected--the only way you're going to be our nominee--is if you are a billionaire, or you're sucking up to billionaires."
This makes sense in the context of her key message: corruption. She is not saying that Bloomberg is corrupt per se as a wealthy person; that would be the Sanders message of inevitable class conflict. Nor does she say what he does is illegal. The corruption consists of the fact that it is not illegal.
Warren says the corruption consists of the overwhelming power of big money when used to affect politics. It replaces citizen power with money power. Money intimidates officeholders and seduces them. Money rigs the system.
Warren condemns Bloomberg's TV candidacy, but pays homage to TV by telling her story with TV ads. She want to nudge her brand from Harvard to Oklahoma, from lecturing know-it-all to "Aunt Betsy." Watch.
Bloomberg, not Steyer, is her target. There's a reason for that. Steyer's message is very similar to hers, that money has too much power, plus Steyer is there on the ground campaigning face to face in New Hampshire and Iowa. Besides, he is not catching on. No use swatting a gnat.
Bloomberg is different. His ads seem to be working.
Bloomberg says he had a middle class upbringing and that he got fired so he started his own company: his log cabin story. He says he has created good jobs for 20,000 employees. He says Trump is utterly unfit and dangerous.
There is a meta message in Bloomberg's audacious strategy of massive TV buys. It shows that Bloomberg can take on Trump.
It shows Michael Bloomberg has power and will exercise it on behalf of Democratic policies. He will campaign his way, tradition be damned, and that he is stronger and richer than Trump, a better citizen, and someone equally willing to break the rules of campaigning. He needn't need to scramble to small town meeting rooms and restaurants to meet fifty or a hundred people at a time. He can talk to millions with money found under his seat cushions.
Bloomberg brand: he is a straight-up alpha-male competent leader.
 |
| Click HERE: Independent and uncorrupted |
Bloomberg's campaign is acknowledgement that money matters, just like Trump said, indeed, just as Sanders and Warren and Steyer say.
Bloomberg is taking Trump's strength, his wealth and TV fame, and showing him to be number two, the loser. Bloomberg is bigger, stronger, vastly richer, and a much safer vessel for that power. It is Bloomberg, not Trump, who is independent and competent.
Warren and Sanders disagree with the underlying premise of the Bloomberg candidacy, that wealth is a qualifier. They want it not to be true.
 |
| Click HERE: competence |
But apparently not everyone in America agrees. Wealthy candidates are commonplace in both parties.
Americans buy lottery tickets hoping to join the rich, not hoping to become virtuous class conscious factory worker members of the proletariat. Apparently the important thing is not whether the leaders have wealth. It is whether they have it themselves.
2 comments:
"Lots of Americans are OK with wealth."
Says who? Let's not overlook the fact that a lot of Americans find the wealthy to be arrogant, entitled, tone deaf and wasteful. I recently realized that I could recycle, cut my consumption, and do all I could to combat climate change, but one profligate wannabe Don Jr. completely negates my efforts. A lot of Americans think executives are overpaid by a self-serving system. Only rich people think everyone wants to be wealthy; most of us are perfectly happy with a level of security and comfort and the ability to provide for our families without aspiring to millions, a dream that wealth inequality threatens.
How would we feel if Sen. Warren was the billionaire? I actually am more revulsed by the "alpha male" aspect of wealth with all the paternalism that goes with it. Without his money Bloomberg would be just another wishy washy moderate and probably wouldn't enjoy the luxury of lecturing the rest of us.
Don't get me wrong. I respect success and admire, to a point, those who have that singleminded drive. I'm just not all that in favor of them governing the rest of us. Could Bloomberg be another FDR, who to some extent put aside his privileged attitudes for the common good? Frankly that's not quite the vibe I get.
Sen. Warren is spot on.
lots of Americans are OK with wealth
Duh
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Adams, the Roosevelts, Hoover, Kennedy, Reagan, the Bushes
perhaps, it's just we want to be OK with somebody rich for something more significant than $$$.... and Bloomberg reaches that threshold for me because he's willing to spend a big chunk of that wealth for a shared goal: get Trump mobsters and Repubs out of DC. Don't detect any FDR vibe, either, but don't need that.
Post a Comment