Dick Morris: Bloomberg Could Win Dem Nomination
Bye bye Biden. As Joe stinks to 19 percent and 22 percent in the latest Monmouth (8/26) and Economist/UGov (8/21) polls, putting him in a statistical tie with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for the first time, there is an opening for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the Democratic primary.
Here’s how it might come about:
Step One: Biden fades into a tie with Sanders and Warren (already happening) and then falls to third place. Biden has no way to come back. He is the candidate of events that happened between 2008-2016. If the past is not enough to propel him into the future — as it manifestly is not — nothing he can say now will boost him further.
He stands on Obama’s record, but he is also imprisoned by it. For example, he can’t advocate Medicare for All because that would implicitly dump on Obamacare.
Voters know all about him and his record and have found him wanting. Since he announced, he has fallen from 42 percent of the vote to 19 percent. He ain’t coming back.
Step Two: The former Biden voters all go to Warren. They won’t go to Sanders. Ever since he announced, Sanders has never made it past the low 20s in the polls. The remaining 80 percent are immune to his charm. Warren’s surge from 8 percent to 20 percent is what has laid Biden low. And she will continue to pick up the votes he sheds, as she is now doing.
How about Harris and the others? The swish of Warren’s momentum will eat up all the oxygen that might otherwise fuel their candidacies. It will be all Warren, all the time.
So, in a few weeks, look for Warren to become the front runner by an increasingly large margin.
Step Three: That will freak out the establishment and center of the Democratic Party. They know Warren can’t win and is too radical and shrewish to pull it off. She looks like what she is: A former professor who is tough as nails and will flunk you as soon as look at you. And she won’t provide much in the way of coattails for aspirant Democratic congresspeople either.
So the hunt will be on for the Great Moderate Hope. Hillary will test the waters and find them scalding.
Tom Steyer will hope for lightning, but he’s too unknown and too conservative.
But Bloomberg would fit the bill precisely. There’s still time to file for the primaries and his brand of social liberalism and economic moderation will attract voters who are scared of a Warren wipeout in 2020.
Does Bloomberg want to be president? Duh. Yes.
Can he go toe to toe with Donald? He’s been mayor of New York and held his own with the toughest press corps outside of Washington.
He can demagogue with the best of them and still appeal to the business community as they look up from their Bloomberg software terminals in their offices.
It can happen.
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