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Bloomberg or the field?

By Staff | Jan 10, 2020

If you were nearly 78 years old and worth more than $50 billion, you too might plan to spend $10 million on a Super Bowl commercial to promote your presidential campaign.

So is the case it seems with former New York City Mayor and media mogul Michael Bloomberg, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

Bloomberg now ranks fifth in the Real Clear Politics national polling average, trailing only Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg. In fact, one recent poll showed Bloomberg surging ahead of Buttigieg and into a tie with Warren for third place.

There is just one catch about Bloomberg’s candidacy: No one in New Hampshire even has the option of voting for him to be the Democratic nominee.

That’s because Bloomberg simply didn’t register to participate in the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation (#FITN) presidential primary.

In January 2019, Bloomberg visited the WH Bagshaw Co. machine shop in Nashua.

“It’s wonderful to be here to see a real American company,” Bloomberg told Bagshaw employees last year. “It’s what you do, that gives one hope for the future of American jobs,” he added.

By March, however, Bloomberg announced he would not run for president in 2020. Throughout the spring, summer and most of the fall in 2019, Bloomberg sat back as Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg and former candidate Kamala Harris of California traded places near or at the top of national polls.

However, as Thanksgiving neared, rumors swirled that Bloomberg had second thoughts, and would enter the race, anyway. He did just that on Nov. 24 … nine days after the registration deadline for the New Hampshire primary.

Bloomberg, who spent time as both a Republican and an independent from 2001-2018, appears to have strong disagreements with Sanders and Warren when it comes to matters of taxes and spending.

“We could never afford that. You’re talking about trillions of dollars,” Bloomberg told The Telegraph in Nashua last year when asked about the single-payer health care plan now commonly known as Medicare for All. Both Sanders and Warren are strong proponents of this strategy.

Instead, Bloomberg appears he will attempt to win the nomination on a platform of strong gun regulations, eliminating fossil fuels and attacking President Donald Trump at every turn.

“Nobody’s trying to take away anybody’s handguns … or rifles or shotguns,” Bloomberg told the Associated Press during a Tuesday event in Richmond, Virginia. “What we’re trying to do is have sensible gun regulations.”

During a Dec. 13 campaign stop in Alexandria, Virginia, Bloomberg said, “So far, we have retired 299 out of 530 coal plants across this country. And we have a commitment to retire all of them by 2030.”

We’re not sure Bloomberg has much chance of winning the nomination because someone who simply disregards, not only New Hampshire, but also Iowa, does not seem viable to us.

Nevertheless, it should be fun to see just how many millions, or even billions, of Bloomberg’s own dollars he eventually blows through trying to win the nomination.

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