The Washington Post writes here about MIchael Bloomberg’s unusual campaign: Skip the early primaries, inundate the key states with unprecedented spending.
Unlike Trump, Bloomberg has experience in running for office and winning, and he has executive experience as a three-term mayor of New York City. Unlike Trump, Bloomberg is a real billionaire, with assets of more than $50 billion. He is good on climate change and gun control.
He has liabilities, to be sure, including his racist “stop and frisk” policy, which prompted police harassment of hundreds of thousands of innocent black men. His education policies were a disaster, based squarely on NCLB strategies of high-stakes testing and choice. His corporation was sued for gender discrimination repeatedly by women employees. He is unlikely to be concerned about income inequality or wealth inequality, both of which have directly benefited him.
But Trump has lowered the bar on racism and sexism and preferential treatment of the 1%.
Bloomberg is prepared to saturate the nation with TV and internet ads. He has already hired a campaign staff of hundreds of people. And he has just begun.
The campaign has been offering field organizers salaries of $6,000 a month, a 70 percent premium from the going rate of $3,500 paid by the campaigns of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
It has picked up key hires such as Dan Kanninen, a former aide to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) during his successful 2008 campaign; former Obama organizer Mitch Stewart; Obama’s former Ohio strategist Aaron Pickrell; and Gary Briggs, a former top marketing executive for Facebook and Google. The money they have been sending out the door for advertising is record-setting. Since his campaign launch on Nov. 24, Bloomberg has spent or reserved about $60 million in television and radio ads, with no sign of slowing down.
Taken together, the top four polling Democrats in the race — former vice president Joe Biden; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Sanders and Warren — have spent about $28 million on similar ads all year.
He has also purchased $4.6 million of Google ads, from YouTube spots that run alongside video game streamers to classic search promotions. That is more than any other Democratic campaign has spent over the full year, according to the company. On Facebook, his spending over the past week ran at more than $170,000 a day, 2½ times the level of President Trump’s reelection campaign and about three times more than Tom Steyer, the other billionaire Democrat seeking the nomination. All of his digital ads are focused on increasing his support and recruiting staff, rather than the fundraising that occupies other campaigns.
He could spend $1 billion, $2 billion, without putting a dent in his vast fortune. His candidacy will test the question of whether one of the richest men in history can step into a presidential election and buy it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Or confuse Never Trump voters so much, they do not know who to vote for against Trump … if Bloomberg doesn’t win the nomination at the Democratic Convention and he goes solo as an independent candidate splitting the Never Trump vote.
Why would Bloomberg spend this much money if he wasn’t in it for the long run?
Washington Monthly says he should run in GOP primaries against Trump
Bloomberg should listen to the Washington Monthly, then.
Just a couple of weeks ago on PBS Bloomberg stated that he does not support living wage legislation (so much for supporting the middle class as his ads claim) and that he does not believe the president of China, Xi Jinping, is authoritarian. Tell that to a minority that is being put into camps and tell that to Hong Kong residents protesting for their rights.
“Since his campaign launch on Nov. 24, Bloomberg has spent or reserved about $60 million in television and radio ads, with no sign of slowing down.”
I’m fed up with wealthy white business men who think they would do a good job of being president. The job should not be one that can be purchased.
Gov. Rauner has donated $50 million of his own money to his 2018 re-election campaign.
May 31, 2017
Governor Bruce Rauner (R) of Illinois has achieved a milestone- a little over one year into his first term and Illinois has the lowest credit rating of any state and is now tied with Alaska for the highest unemployment among states in the country at 6.6%. Rauner is as ideologically rigid as other conservative true believers like Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas or Governor Rick Scott of Florida.
Time will tell what Pritzker does.
Almost no one in Illinois had more resources to devote to running for governor than J.B. Pritzker. At 53, Pritzker is the billionaire scion of the state’s wealthiest family. His sister, Penny, served as President Barack Obama’s commerce secretary. The family name adorns the University of Chicago’s medical school, Northwestern University’s law school and the gleaming, Frank Gehry-designed band shell in Chicago’s Millennium Park, not to mention the country’s most prestigious prize for architecture. Four of the dozen richest Illinoisans are Pritzkers, according to Forbes. J.B. Pritzker’s share of the family fortune is estimated at $3.2 billion.
Illinois — the sixth-biggest state, by population — has seen its credit rating cut to near-junk status in the decade since the financial crisis. Its bonds are now considered as risky as those of Russia and Romania. Its pension system is in worse shape than that of almost any other state.
He should run as a Republican against Trump.
I noticed that he has given about $10 million to democratic candidates running for re-election in districts that Republicans have targeted because they flipped voters from Trump and are also first year members of Congress. I think that gesture is an attempt to buy good will and not more. It also responds to Republican threats made during the Impeachment hearings.
Update your brains: this election is Nazi vs. Normal, not Right vs. Left. Bloomberg is on our side. He’s smarter than Joe and will probably fight more effectively against Orange Hitler and his unscrupulous thugs than Joe. Liberals will come to rue their petty squabbling, their quest for purity and perfection, if Orange Hitler wins.
I will enthusiastically vote for any candidate, including Bloomberg, who wins the Democratic nomination.
I will enthusiastically fight against Bloomberg’s nomination and fight for other candidates who are far superior than Bloomberg in the primary.
If we all agree to that, Trump will be defeated.
If some people are saying they would rather have the racist, xenophobic and entirely corrupt Donald Trump over Bernie or Warren or Biden or Bloomberg, then that says a lot about their values.
Anyone who would vote for Trump or vote for a 3rd party candidate knowing that empowers another 4 years of Trump, because they don’t like Bernie or Warren, is not to be trusted. Anyone who fears Bernie or Warren more than Trump is clearly going to vote for Trump no matter what because they clearly believe Trump isn’t that bad.
We saw those people here in 2016 who said if Bernie didn’t win, they’d help defeat the Democratic candidate. Those misguided folks brought us Trump.
Now those misguided folks are joined by other misguided folks who are more moderate who say if Bernie DOES get the nomination, they’d help defeat him by not voting for Bernie over Trump.
I believe there is a lot of Russian and right wing propaganda trolls encouraging the most gullible people to believe “if not Bernie, I
‘m not voting” “if not Bloomberg, I’m not voting” “if not Warren, I’m not voting”. Many gullible people on the left were made unwitting fools of by Russia propaganda and some of them still seem to be deluded enough to believe that it was a decision that will bring a progressive future.
In fact, we are now in terrible danger of their decision bringing a neo-fascist future. They still believe Trump is a joke and not dangerous to democracy itself. They still believe that having two far right Justices instead of two new Ruth Bader Ginsburgs is going to make a progressive future come sooner.
Bottom line is that we all work hard for the candidate we WANT and if the majority of primary voters choose a different candidate, we all work hard for that candidate to defeat Trump, whoever that candidate may be.
Those who disagree – whether they claim to be Bloomberg supporters or Bernie supporters – are not worth considering because they are not to be trusted anyway — they are just as deplorable as the rabid Trump supporters cheering him on at rallies. Because they are enabling Trump just as much as his rabid supporters do while knowing how truly evil and dangerous Trump is. They are normalizing Trump.
If the Democrats ran Abraham Lincoln in his coffin, I’d vote for the corpse over Trump any day.
Someone said on Twitter a few days ago that he would vote for a pencil eraser over Trump.
Let’s hear it for Mr/Ms. P. Eraser.
I get local stations from Scranton, Penn. on my old TV. Tons of Bloomberg ads PLUS lots of Trump attack ads against Congressman Matt Cartwright (Dem. PA 8) It’s a swing district that will be up for grabs next year.
Scranton was one of the last stops for Trump right before the ’16 election. Very interesting to see them going at it already. I get a good laugh out of Mike B.’s ads. On the other hand, the attacks on Cartwright make me so angry I’ve done what the G.O.P. told me to do and called Matt C. -except I leave a long message telling him to keep on fighting the Donald, “Good job, Matt…. etc… etc…” Some staffer must think I’m drunk when they play back those messages. (I am not.) Of course, that’s assuming anyone actually has time to listen to constituent messages other than to count them.
And, it’s still just 2019….