Mike Bloomberg is wishing right now that he hadn’t qualified for this debate
When the news first broke that Mike Bloomberg had qualified for tonight’s debate by virtue of rising poll numbers, some observers complained that he’d merely bought his popularity with his massive TV ad budget. But Palmer Report pointed out that Bloomberg might end up regretting having qualified, because it meant he would finally have to answer some uncomfortable questions about his candidacy and history, in front of a live national television audience. Sure enough, this is going badly for him so far.
In fact, this is going almost startlingly badly for Mike Bloomberg. There isn’t necessarily any “good” answer for him to give about his stop and frisk history; all he can do is acknowledge that he got it wrong. But was he not expecting to get questions about his failure to release his tax returns? His answer was so bad, it was almost Trump-like, and that doesn’t work on the Democratic side.
Bloomberg gave an even worse answer on his nondisclosure agreements with certain female employees. Women voters can (and will) speak for themselves, but gut feeling says Bloomberg’s bizarrely tone-deaf answer will hurt him badly with them. This is all before getting to the blow after blow that Elizabeth Warren keeps landing squarely on him.
It’s not clear if Mike Bloomberg is merely out of practice on the debate stage, or if he’s simply not accustomed to the much higher standards that Democratic candidates are held to, or if he’s just not good at this. Either way, unless he turns things around in the second half of the debate, he’s going to end up with negative reaction from viewers tonight, and negative headlines in the morning. It’s hard to imagine his poll numbers don’t drop after this – but we’ll see.
