{"id":229852,"date":"2016-03-08T03:59:55","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T03:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=229852"},"modified":"2016-10-18T13:47:31","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T13:47:31","slug":"michael-bloomberg-indicates-he-wants-clinton-as-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/michael-bloomberg-indicates-he-wants-clinton-as-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Bloomberg Indicates He Wants Clinton as President"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

On March 7th, Michael Bloomberg, NYC\u2019s richest person and former Mayor, announced<\/span><\/a> that he would not run for President and that he hopes Hillary Clinton will become the next President but that her recent rhetoric copying that of the anti-Wall-Street Senator Bernie Sanders is causing him some concern: “The leading Democratic candidates have attacked policies that spurred growth and opportunity under President Bill Clinton — support for trade, charter schools,\u00a0deficit reduction and the financial sector. Meanwhile, the leading Republican candidates have attacked policies that spurred growth and opportunity under\u00a0President Ronald Reagan.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bloomerg became NYC\u2019s richest person by serving the Wall Street banks, \u201cthe financial sector.\u201d He ignores the smaller financial institutions, which don\u2019t bring income to his business, but he says (though only by implication, not by direct assertion) that Hillary Clinton\u2019s rhetorical turn to the left is in violation of her husband\u2019s time in office, when Bill Clinton deregulated Wall Street and so prepared the way for George W. Bush\u2019s economic crash \u2014 which Bloomberg has always said wasn\u2019t Wall Street\u2019s fault.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, despite that rhetorical left turn by Hillary, he still wants her to become President, because his polling shows that if he were to run, then none of the three candidates \u2014 Clinton, the Republican, and Bloomberg \u2014 would win more than 50%, and the choice of our President would be decided by the members of the U.S. Congress. And, “with Republicans in charge of both Houses, there is a good chance that my candidacy could lead to the election of Donald Trump or Senator Ted Cruz. That is not a\u00a0risk I can take in good conscience.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t say that the election of Hillary Clinton \u201cis not a risk I can take in good conscience,\u201d but just that his being a candidate would deprive Hillary Clinton of the Presidency, and that that\u2019s \u201cnot a risk I can take in good conscience.\u201d So: he clearly prefers Clinton, despite his saying that, “The leading Democratic candidates have attacked policies that spurred growth and opportunity under President Bill Clinton.\u201d He seems to be implying that Hillary Clinton\u2019s recent rhetorical turn to the left is only in order to win the Democratic nomination \u2014 not a real indication of the way she would govern as President.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beside his evident contempt for the Republican candidates, he is clear that he also would very much fear a Sanders Presidency, because no one questions the sincerity of Sanders\u2019s intentions, which Bloomberg sees as rejecting “support for trade, charter schools,\u00a0deficit reduction and the financial sector.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bloomberg\u2019s statement makes clear his great admiration for Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan \u2014 two very pro-Wall-Street Presidents, supporters of \u201cthe financial sector\u201d that he obviously cares about very much.<\/span><\/p>\n

He says: “The fact is, even if I were to receive the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, victory would be highly unlikely, because most members of Congress\u00a0would vote for their party\u2019s nominee. Party loyalists in Congress \u2014 not the American people or the Electoral College \u2014 would determine the next president,\u201d which would be the Republican nominee, because Republicans have majorities in both houses.<\/span><\/p>\n

This reading of his statement was also put forth in different ways by two articles in Politico on the same day as Bloomberg\u2019s announcement.\u00a0Karen van Hall wrote<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that “he was motivated to consider an independent bid not only because of Trump and Cruz but also because of Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist\u00a0who has pledged to break up Wall Street banks \u2014 a direct threat to his financial data and media empire.\u201d According to her analysis, the only candidate that Bloomberg doesn\u2019t fear is Hillary Clinton \u2014 and he seems to feel rather confident that she will win her Party\u2019s nomination and will then return to her Bill-Clintonite policies: pro-Wall-Street.\u00a0Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote<\/span><\/a>: “In a Trump versus Sanders head-to-head, they figured, Bloomberg would ride the centrist lane right up to the White House, getting him elected outright in\u00a0November.\u201d That clearly states Bloomberg\u2019s having turned the more against running when Sanders\u2019s crushing 74% loss to Clinton in South Carolina indicated, to Bloomberg, that Sanders wouldn\u2019t be the Democrtic nominee \u2014 Clinton would. According to this line of thinking, Bloomberg might have entered the contest if Sanders were to be the nominee, but he no longer thinks that that possibility is credible enough for Bloomberg to enter the contest early enough to be able to get onto all the states\u2019 ballots. He\u2019s got to decide right now, and so he did. Perhaps he will be donating to Clinton\u2019s campaign now.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse On March 7th, Michael Bloomberg, NYC\u2019s richest person and former Mayor, announced that he would not run for President and that he hopes Hillary Clinton will become the next President but that her recent rhetoric copying that of the anti-Wall-Street Senator Bernie Sanders is causing him some concern: “The leading Democratic candidates have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":229853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461,18],"tags":[881,951,971,949,6257,531],"class_list":{"0":"post-229852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials","9":"category-latest-news","10":"tag-bloomberg","11":"tag-clinton","12":"tag-cruz","13":"tag-sanders","14":"tag-trump","15":"tag-wall-street"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}