Elizabeth Warren’s 2024 Campaign Is Mike Bloomberg’s Best Revenge Opportunity
In Massachusetts, an opening for an opponent
It seems like a long time ago, but it was less than three years: Feb. 19, 2020, the night that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., killed Michael Bloomberg’s promising presidential campaign.
The headlines tell the story.
"Bludgeoning Mike Bloomberg to Death Paid off for Elizabeth Warren — Literally," is how Vanity Fair put it.'"Titanic, Meet Iceberg’: Warren’s 'Devastating' Takedown of Bloomberg Goes Viral," is how The Washington Post covered it.
"How Elizabeth Warren Destroyed Mike Bloomberg’s Campaign in 60 Seconds,"
was the Guardian’s headline.
Warren, recall, accused Bloomberg of both sexism and racism.
"I'd like to talk about who we're running against, a billionaire who calls women 'fat broads' and 'horse-faced lesbians.' And, no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mayor Bloomberg," she said.
"Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop and frisk. . . . Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another."
Warren said that Bloomberg’s policing "targeted Black and brown men from the beginning." And Warren said, "Mayor Bloomberg was busy blaming African-Americans and Latinos for the housing crash of 2008."
If it all seems like ancient history, or water under the bridge, consider this: Warren is running for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2024.
If Bloomberg wants to make her feel some consequences for her scurrilous accusations, this is the opportunity.
Bloomberg has an executive personality and has long said that there only a few jobs worth having in public life — mayor of New York, president of the United States, and president of the World Bank.
So perhaps it’s too much to hope that he’d run against Warren for Senate himself, even though, as a Massachusetts native who has kept close ties to the state, he’d be a strong and plausible candidate.
At the very least, Bloomberg and his team could devote some time and money to finding, and supporting, a candidate who can defeat Warren.
Defeating an incumbent senator is rare, but not impossible, and Warren is so far left that she’s extreme and out of touch with mainstream Massachusetts voters.
Not only that, she’s so deeply invested in her career as a national far-left celebrity that she’s neglected her home state.
In this most recent cycle, Warren endorsed a crew of far-left Israel haters including Cori Bush, Summer Lee, Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn and Ayana Pressley, D-Mass.
In a recent vote to keep the American embassy in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, Warren was one of only three senators out of 100 who took the extreme anti-Israel position.
Bloomberg could back a Democratic primary candidate against Warren.
He could back an independent candidate against Warren.
He could back a Republican candidate against Warren. A lot of Massachusetts voters would leap at any of those three options — anything other than a re-election of Warren.
Bloomberg — whose fortune was recently estimated by Forbes at $76.8 billion, though that may be an underestimate by Forbes, which has a history of inaccurately lowballing the Bloomberg fortune — has the resources to make a difference in the race.
There’s a businessman’s impulse to cut your losses and move on.
Bloomberg would probably be happy to never think about that Las Vegas night ever again.
But for all Bloomberg’s business-mindedness, he’s also tremendously public-spirited.
He knows that the Warren wing of the Democratic Party — in its deep-seated hostility to free enterprise, to wealth accumulation, to entrepreneurship, to Israel, to policing — is a threat to the future of America.
It’s a threat to our prosperity and to our national security.
If Mike Bloomberg can be "destroyed" by some former Harvard law professor from Cambridge hurling false accusations of racism, sexism, and homophobia, what hope is there in politics for future public-spirited businessmen?
Lost would be the opportunity for leaders capable of making real advancements of the sort that New York City made under Bloomberg’s leadership — and that were lost under Mayor de Blasio.
Warren’s attack was especially underhanded given all that Bloomberg has done, both policywise as mayor and as a philanthropist and employer, to advance the interests, health, careers and status of women, people of color, and gays and lesbians.
Anyway, the earlier the anti-Warren forces identify and unite around a candidate, the more time that candidate will have to organize and to build support in the Bay State.
For Bloomberg, helping to defeat Warren in 2024 could help rewrite the story of that 2020 presidential campaign from a short-lived embarrassment into a longer-term victory that shapes the future of the Democratic Party, and the country, for the better.
It would generate a revised set of headlines.
Ira Stoll is the author of "Samuel Adams: A Life," and "JFK, Conservative." Read Ira Stoll's Reports — More Here.