January 11, 2020

Bloomberg Is Saying All the Right Things About Party Unity—For Now

Check back in July.

Bloomberg

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Michael Bloomberg hasn’t been a Democrat for long. The billionaire White House hopeful began his adult life in the party of FDR, but he switched to the GOP when he ran for mayor of New York City in 2001, winning the endorsement of Rudy Giuliani. Bloomberg later became an independent and then changed his registration to back Democratic in 2018, after endorsing Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Now, as he seeks the Democratic presidential nomination in a historically unorthodox and mind-mindbogglingly expensive campaign, Bloomberg is trying to demonstrate his commitment to his once-and-current party with a promise to fund 500 staffers and a $15 million voter turnout operation to support the eventual nominee. That news, first reported by NBC, came with a lingering question: Would he commit those kinds of resources to electing the Democratic nominee, no matter who it is? What if it’s Democratic-Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont (currently leading in Iowa), or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren—both of whom have pilloried the influence of the uber-rich and have accused the Bloomberg of trying to buy the nomination.

Now Politico‘s Holly Otterbein adds some clarity: Yes, Bloomberg says he plans to spend big, even if that means spending big on behalf of Sanders and Warren.

That comes on the same day the Daily Beast reports that Bloomberg—after spending $200 million on his candidacy—is currently on pace to pick up zero delegates.

That’s potentially a very big deal. Bloomberg has faced criticism from some Democrats for his support of Republicans in the recent past. (In 2018, he raised money for New York Republican Reps. Peter King and Dan Donovan.) What’s more, the news comes amid a months-long drumbeat of other Democratic donors on Wall Street threatening to pull their money from the party if someone like Warren is the nominee.

But of course, this all comes with a giant caveat. The whole point of advertising in advance how magnanimous you’ll be to the eventual nominee is to convince people of your loyalty so they’ll make you the nominee instead. It’s one thing to say this in January; it’s another to follow through with it in July.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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