Could Bloomberg Really Beat Trump?

By David K. Shipler

                Michael Bloomberg’s tone-deaf paralysis in the Las Vegas debate puts a boldface question mark behind the growing assumption among many Democrats that only he can defeat President Trump in November. One debate fiasco might matter little in the end, given that many more people are seeing the flood of Bloomberg TV and internet ads. And maybe he’ll do better next time. Still, 19.7 million viewers watched his first. But if he gets the nomination, voters will see him extensively, out from behind his screen of commercials. He could use a serious makeover.

                His advantage is his money: his generous philanthropy on the liberal side of such issues as gun control and climate change, his decisive contributions to Democratic candidates, the networks of loyalty that he has purchased in cities throughout the country, and his extensive campaign organization. He knows how to direct his dollars effectively, and his ex-Republican centrism will surely appeal to moderate Republicans who are disaffected with Trump.

                Yet voter turnout is crucial, and that depends largely on a candidate’s appealing demeanor, vision, and forward-looking agenda. Trump has built a wall of zealotry. To break through it, a Democratic opponent needs a surge of young and minority citizens moved by passion and belief, plus a middle-spectrum of voters in swing states. Right now, Bloomberg looks like nothing more than the candidate of last resort. That’s not enough to drive enough people to the polls.

There is a sharp hunger in the land for decency. There is a thirst for honesty, candor, authenticity—all traits that Trump supporters mistakenly attribute to the president. Depending on which citizens you ask, the country is impatient for reform and afraid of it, welcoming and resentful of demographic diversity, idealistic and cynical about politics in America.

                Whatever common ground can be found among those contradictions is the platform from which a Trump defeat can be launched. Call it a New Patriotism, a summons to a pragmatic, hard-nosed mobilization of America’s finest qualities and dreams. Is it sufficient for voters to admire a candidate’s brainpower or agree on policy? Not quite, it seems. Support requires “I like, not I.Q.,” Mark Shields noted on the PBS NewsHour. Likable, Bloomberg is not—at least not yet.

                Fortunately for him, some of his vulnerabilities coincide with some of Trump’s: misogyny and racial stereotyping in particular. In a more rational world, Trump would have no credibility attacking him for those faults; he and his surrogates will surely do so anyway. So voters who care would have to weigh Bloomberg’s transgressions against Trump’s. It should be no contest—Trump’s are much more egregious.

But in this highly charged era, nuance and relativity fade. Change is dismissed as impossible. People are condemned to categories without escape. Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk policing, his coarse and cruel sexual remarks to female employees, and his refusal in the debate to release women from non-disclosure agreements so they can speak freely are stains that won’t be scrubbed off without a novel effort. He took a good step Friday by announcing that three women accusers would be released from those gag orders. 

                On stage, he was clueless. Surely he expected the questions. Surely, as has been reported, he was prepped and advised beforehand. But he didn’t even have scripted answers, much less a compassionate instinct for understanding the strong currents of concern that are coursing through the country he wants to lead.

                He displayed little conceptual thinking, no vision except defeating Trump (a worthy cause, of course), and no ability to project an inspiring personality through the cold lens of the television camera. In that, he was no match for Bernie Sanders, who excites a leftwing segment of Democrats even as he worries the rest, who are certain he would lose a general election. Bloomberg turns off that critical left. Given the high cause of defeating Trump, many might hold their noses and vote for Bloomberg anyway. But how many?

                It would be refreshing if a politician who did people wrong in the past knew how to disclose and discuss his faults, education, and evolution. Bloomberg’s gestures of apology have been shallow. While he has not been accused of physical sexual assault, he ought to be acknowledging that words in the workplace can be a kind of assault, especially coming from a boss. It would be refreshing if a politician confronted his racial prejudices and described whatever learning and realization he has acquired. If he has taken a journey in attitudes and behavior, it would be healthy for the rest of the country if he mapped the path in the open.

So far, though, Bloomberg does not appear to be that sort of politician. If he’s not introspective about himself, he cannot lead the nation into the introspection it needs on race and gender. And then, how large would that crucial black and Latino turnout be for him?

                Furthermore, his cavalier evasion of a key constitutional protection deserves scrutiny. His policing practice of stopping pedestrians in minority neighborhoods to pat them down for guns—with no “reasonable suspicion” that they were armed, as the Supreme Court’s case law requires—resembled the tactics I witnessed in Washington, D.C. during many late nights traveling with a gun unit of the Metropolitan Police Department researching a book, The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties.

Dozens of people were searched to little effect, since hardly any guns were found. In warm weather, young black men were so used to being frisked without cause that when uniformed cops approached, the men pulled up their shirts without being asked to show that they had no pistols in their belts. Imagine the uproar if white pedestrians were randomly stopped and searched.

                The violation is not only racial, although that is its main effect. The problem lies also in its disregard for the Fourth Amendment, a centerpiece of our treasured Bill of Rights. Amy Klobuchar, a former prosecutor, alluded to this recently, but the words “Fourth Amendment” have hardly ever appeared in the flood of news reporting on the controversy.

                Bloomberg has admitted that stop-and-frisk was wrong. But it is not a confession sufficient in scope to the constitutional offense. Note the pivotal use of the word “secure” in the Fourth Amendment. While Bloomberg cited security from guns and crime as a rationale for violating the rights of innocent New Yorkers on the streets, the Framers saw security in another light.

                The Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

                Decades ago, Justice Robert H. Jackson sounded this warning: “Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government.”  We need a candidate and a president who understands this, or at least—in Bloomberg’s case—can explain how he has come to understand it, if he has.