Of Course Michael Bloomberg Is an Oligarch
Democratic presidential candidate and former Mayor of New York City Michael
Bloomberg.Democratic presidential candidate and former Mayor of New York
City Michael Bloomberg. (Carlos Osorio / AP)
A recent exchange on MSNBC turned viral after Nina Turner, a national
campaign co-chair for Bernie Sanders, described billionaire Michael
Bloomberg as an oligarch. That drew a heated response from MSNBC
contributor and political science professor Jason Johnson, who insisted that
Turners word choice was unfair and inaccurate.
Thats absurd. By any common definition, Bloombergs an oligarch. He wants
to buy your vote. Based on his record, hes also coming for your Social
Security.
After this exchange, Sen. Turner tweeted, I may not have a PhD (yet!) but I
DO have the good sense of knowing what makes for Oligarchy.
Hey, Im not a clockmaker, but I know what time it is.
My social media feed is filled with Democrats celebrating Bloombergs return
to the Democratic Party, his candidacy, and his pledge to up to a billion
dollars to defeat Trump. (Few, if any, of these Democrats are repeating a
line of attack often used against Sandersthat hes not really a
Democratdespite the fact that Bloomberg is a former Republican who only
rejoined the Democratic Party two years ago.)
Think again.
The Video
A brief recap of the oligarch argument: Turner, Johnson, and Chris
Matthews were discussing the Democratic National Committees last-minute
rules change, which allowed Bloomberg into the next debate after he wrote it
a large check.
We should be ashamed of that as Americans, people who believe in
democracy, said Sen. Turner, that the oligarchs, if you have more money
you can buy your way.
When asked if she thought Bloomberg was an oligarch, Turner didnt hesitate.
He is, she said, buying his way into the race.
Johnson insisted this was name-calling, and that a label like oligarch
has implications in this country that I think are unfair and unreasonable.
But is it true? Some landmark political science studiesand most
dictionariessay that it is.
Is This Country an Oligarchy?
Merriam-Webster defines an oli·gar·chy as follows:
1 : government by the few
2 : a government in which a small group exercises control especially for
corrupt and selfish purposes; also: a group exercising such control
3 : an organization under oligarchic control
Does that describe our government? Political scientists Martin Gilens and
Benjamin Page found that Economic elites and organized groups representing
business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government
policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or
no independent influence.
Gilens and Page didnt use the word oligarchy, but those elites and groups
represent only a small percentage of the population, so a number of the
journalists who covered their work did.
In a related finding, political scientist Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues
found the relations between money and major party votes in all elections
for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives from 1980 to 2014 are well
approximated by straight lines.
Money doesnt just talk, it votes. Thats oligarchy.
But is Michael Bloomberg an Oligarch?
An oligarch, according to the Cambridge American Dictionary, is one of a
small group of powerful people who control a country or an industry.
Is Michael Bloomberg such a person? Maybe hes just really rich and doesnt
control that much. But lets have some background.
With an estimated net worth of more than $60 billion, Bloomberg is the
twelfth-richest person on the planet and the ninth-richest person in the
United States. Thats a pretty small group of people. But do they control
the country? Ferguson et al. found that campaign cash drives election
outcomes. That means campaign donors largely control the process.
Gilens and Page found that wealthy people and interests usually get what
they want. The rest of us usually dont, unless what we want is also what
they want. The fact that progressives like some of Bloombergs positions
doesnt undermine these findings. In fact, it reinforces them.
Bloomberg hasnt just given money to a number of campaigns. He also controls
a media empire. In true oligarchical fashion, he decreed years ago that his
news outlets would not cover his political career. He said recently that it
would not cover his rivals campaigns, either a move that drew criticism
from journalists and an ethics professor. Less than a month later, however,
Bloomberg News violated that edict by running a hit piece against Bernie
Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Thats oligarchical behavior.
Bloombergs own political history is an exercise in the use of oligarchical
wealth to change electoral outcomes. He was unpopular when he first ran for
mayor of New Yorka situation he rectified by dramatically outspending his
rivals. Even so, Bloomberg only eked out a two-point victory against
Democrat Mark Green in his first mayoral race, after outspending him five to
one.
The argument between Turner and Johnson involved another compelling example
of Bloomberg-as-oligarch. The DNCs rules said each candidate had to have a
minimum number of donors to quality for the debate stage. That rule wasnt
overruled for Cory Booker or Julian Castro, despite calls for greater
diversity in the race. But it was overturned for Bloomberg, who had donated
more than $1 million to the DNC and a related organization a few short weeks
before.
Will Michael Bloomberg Cut Your Social Security?
If you thought there were problems with Joe Bidens Social Security record,
wait until you see Bloombergs. His record of espousing austerity economics
has including a special enthusiasm for cutting Medicare and Social Security.
As he told Face the Nation in 2013:
No program to reduce the deficit makes any sense whatsoever unless you
address the issue of entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security,
interest payment on the debt, which you cant touch, and defense spending.
Everything else is tiny compared to that.
Bloomberg has called for raising the retirement age, a move that would cut
Social Security benefits for all retirees and create physical hardship for
many older workers.
These are bad ideas. They make for even worse politics. Voters love Social
Security. A Pew study released in March 2019 found that 74 percent of
Americans say Social Security benefits should not be reduced in any way.
And voters dont like entitlement cuts, or the Bloomberg-endorsed thinking
behind them. That can be seen in a GBAO/Center for American Progress survey
conducted in October 2019. Less than half of Republicans, one-third of
Democrats, and roughly one-third of independents agreed with the
Bloomberg-like statement that our national debt is way too high, and we
need to cut government spending on the biggest programs like Social
Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Trump has given Democrats an opening on Social Security. His administration
is currently engaged in a de facto program to cut Social Security disability
benefits, by forcing millions of disabled people to endure the punishing
process of eligibility screening as often as every six months. Newsweek
reports that the Social Security Administration concluded that this would
lead to $2.6 billion in benefit cuts and an additional 2.6 million case
reviews between 2020 and 2029. Its a brutal assault on the health and
security of a vulnerable population.
Trump also said he intends to pursue additional cuts to Social Security,
Medicare, and Medicaid after the upcoming election, when he no longer has to
worry about public opinion. Worse, he did so at the annual gathering of
billionaires in Davos. That reinforces the perception that hes imposing
hardship on the majority to help a privileged few.
Most leading Democrats understand that there is wide support for protecting
and expanding Social Security. Most leading candidatesincluding Joe
Bidenhave offered some form of Social Security expansion. House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi has embraced the idea in principle. Theres an opportunity
hereif Bloomberg doesnt stop them from taking it.
What about inequality?
Bloomberg has sometimes embraced tax increases, but he has long opposed tax
hikes that reduce inequality by targeting the wealthy.
In fact, he called the idea class warfare in a 2012 op-ed for the Wall
Street Journal. The op-ed was called Federal Budgets and Class Warfare,
and it trotted out some hoary clichés about class warwhich is more like
asymmetrical warfare on behalf of the richalong with other stale and
debunked right-wing talking points. Bloomberg wrote, for example, that the
top 5% already pay 59% of all federal income taxes, while 42% of filers have
no federal income tax bill at all.
That statistic omits state, local, and sales taxes, so it doesnt prove
Bloombergs point. What it does demonstrate is the extent of todays income
inequality.
Now that hes running, Bloombergs had a seeming change of heart. He has a
plan to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporationsthe same idea he
bitterly condemned in 2012. Its a modest plan, compared to Sanders and
Warren, but its not bad. The question is, does he mean it?
Bloomberg has close ties with organizations that have long campaigned for
deficit reduction and against Social Security and Medicare. His only
recorded complaint against past bipartisan budget-cutting proposals, in
fact, was that they didnt go far enougha statement that won him praise
from the anti-entitlement Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The
Fiscal Times quoted Bloomberg as saying Democrats have to face the reality
that we need more spending cuts, including reasonable entitlement reform.
(Bloombergs class warfare screed was posted on his website, but has since
been removed.)
The text of his this deal doesnt cut spending enough speech has also been
removed from the CRFB website(apparently theres a lot of that going
around.)
There are other reasons to worry about Candidate Bloomberg.
Given his virtually unlimited resources, Bloomberg could theoretically win
both the nomination and the presidency. By my calculation, Bloomberg could
pay the same unit price he paid to make himself mayor of New York$88 per
voterand make himself president for $12 billion. Hed even have $50 billion
set aside for a rainy day.
The nomination would presumably cost less than the presidency, so he has a
better shot at that. But it would be a bad look for the Democrats to become
the first party in modern history whose candidate openly bought the
nomination. But then, Bloombergs used to getting the rules changed just for
him. When he wanted to run for a third term as mayor, Bloomberg used all the
tools at his disposal (one of which led to an ethics complaint) to change
the citys rules. Once he got what he wanted, Bloomberg then pushed to
change the rules back. It seems that some privileges should be labeled, for
oligarchs only.
Democrats should also be troubled by Bloombergs authoritarian streak. As
mayor, Bloomberg had a history of suppressing peaceful demonstrations,
sometimes with brute force. His police spied on Muslim gatherings and
engaged in racially-biased stop and frisk tactics that expanded sevenfold
under his leadership. He took advantaged of privatized public spaces,
including Zuccotti Park, to suspend basic liberties within them, while
renting out his police force to the banks the movement was protesting. His
unconstitutional suppression of Occupy even included the needless
destruction of the movements library.
As Conor Friedensdorf writes in The Atlantic, comparing Bloomberg to Trump:
Had Trump spent years sending armed agents of the state to frisk people of
color, 90 percent of them innocent, would you forgive him? How about if
Trump sent undercover cops to spy on Muslims with no basis for the targeting
other than the mere fact of their religious identity? What if he thwarted
the ability of anti-war protesters to march in New York City?
But its okay to take his money, right?
If he doesnt win the nomination, Bloomberg will once again play the role of
billionaire donor. After lamely arguing that Bernie Sanders is a rich
guyas if a million or two means anything to billionaireProf. Johnson
objected to calling Bloomberg an oligarch because it might make him decide
to close his checkbook. Johnson said:
Its the kind of thing that blows up in your face if you become the nominee
and you have to work with Bloomberg three or four months from now. Thats
the issue that Sanderss people never seem to want to remember.
Johnson didnt seem to realize that his argumentPoliticians shouldnt make
the billionaire mad or he wont give them his moneyis a textbook example
of oligarchy in action.
Maybe Sanders people do remember. Maybe they just dont care.
Bloomberg says hell unconditionally offer financial support to any
Democratic nominee, including Sanders and Warren. That sounds good. But
unconditional isnt Bloombergs usual M.O. As the New York Times reported
in 2018, when he donated heavily to Democrats running for Congress (and one
or two Republicans):
Bloomberg] has indicated to aides that he only wants to support candidates
who share his relatively moderate political orientation, avoiding nominees
hailing from the populist left.
If that means embracing Bloombergs views on Social Security and class
war, Democrats could be trading electability for cash. Beware of
billionaires bearing giftsespecially when one of those gifts is the
billionaire himself.
Richard Eskow / Common Dreams
