You and Your Goddamn Money

The following news came via Michael Scherer in the WashPost yesterday:

Former New York mayor and full-time billionaire Mike Bloomberg has decided to form an independent expenditure campaign that will absorb hundreds of his presidential campaign staffers already on the ground in six swing states -- Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina -- to work to elect Joe Biden this fall. 

Maybe this is what those North Carolina Democratic office-holders were promised when they endorsed Bloomberg for president last month. Maybe they're jumping up and down right now with glee -- for lordy lordy, Democrats will have their own oligarch to fight the oligarch. Maybe Democratic Party officials and Democratic political operatives are similarly juiced for their prospects this year, visions of Bloomberg dollars and field staff dancing in their heads.

But it's the apocalypse, isn't it? Isn't it the Dark Night of our political soul?

Put the stake in the whole idea of reforming a political system that allows rich people all the power. Place that oaken stake over its heart and drive it down hard. Forget reform. Money runs politics, money rules the Republic. And sad to say, Democrats have become ever bit as obsequious to the filthy rich as their Republican counterparts.

If only money didn't also mostly corrupt. (Okay okay I'm willing to admit that there are also statesmen in our history who stood for righteous justice and would not kowtow. They're in the minority.) If only money didn't bend the moral will. The hand is out, and the hand that places money in that hand also wants something tangible, at the very least a stability in the system that guarantees their continuing profit. People with money don't like threats to their state of play. They'll use the politicians they've bought to guard their interests. The more the money, the more the corrosion of principles, both civic and moral.

An independent expenditure group, like Bloomberg is planning for North Carolina, is not allowed to coordinate with candidate campaigns. But they wouldn't exist without a tacit mind-bond with the candidate they're supporting. That's just logic. Since they must report their donors -- unlike the far more sinister dark groups with the hidden connections, like Mitch McConnell's Faith and Power PAC --independent expenditure orgs are less objectionable, maybe, and I have applauded the work of some of them on the liberal side of things. For those of you keeping a hypocrisy log on me.

And there it is. The hook. For here I am lusting for some of that money too. What we could do with it in Watauga County.

More Mail Pieces

Covered up every day now with glossy mailers. Yesterday, three more from Bloomberg and two from Klobuchar.

Personally, this voter voted two weeks ago, but thanks for playing!

Did Bloomberg Buy You?

We received three pieces of mail from Mike Bloomberg at our house yesterday:

1 of 3 Bloomberg mail pieces
we received yesterday

1. A fancy, unfolding, 5-panel contraption in heavy cardstock and full color with each fold teased by a "WE WANT" headline, as though we are children clamoring at the ice cream truck. Don't worry. The rich man will give us sweets. (The photo here doesn't really do it justice -- especially the expense of producing a mailer like this.)

2. A one-page letter in a No. 10 envelope purporting to be a personal letter to us from Mike Bloomberg in which he mainly evokes 9/11 and reassures us -- though usually letters like this from candidates are asking for money -- he doesn't want a dime from us. Not one dime.

3. An oversize, glossy, folded flyer whose main pitch is anti-NRA.

Okay, we get it. The billionaire can waste this much money on voters who've already voted early in the North Carolina primary. He can't buy us but he sure as hell can bury us in paper.

But is he buying others, particularly elected Democratic office-holders who've been piling into the Bloomberg limo at a depressing clip? Vy Liles, the mayor of Charlotte. Current Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin and former Raleigh mayors Charles Meeker and Nancy McFarlane. Most recently, the two Democratic leaders in the NC House and Senate, Darren Jackson and Dan Blue. Jeez.

The inevitable and logical question: Did they get the Bloomberg gift bag? What were they promised?

Because Bloomberg himself obviously thinks in terms of buying people like assets. His slip of the tongue during last night's debate was perhaps the most iconic self-identifier we'll ever hear from the ex-mayor. In talking about how he helped about half of the Democrats who won in the midterm elections of 2018, he bragged,

Twenty-one of those are people that I spent a hundred million dollars to help elect. All of the new Democrats that came in and put Nancy Pelosi in charge and gave the Congress the ability to control this president, I bough — I, I got them.

If I were one of the Democratic progressives running for a seat in the NC House or Senate this year, I would be depressed that the Democratic leaders in those chambers had put themselves so publicly in Bloomberg's pocket.

We Weren't Waiting for Bloomberg

“You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.”

― Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

The political slog right now feels like Waiting for Godot. We're waiting. We're always waiting for The Dude. But Godot will not be coming tonight, though he will surely come tomorrow. You know what? He ain't coming.

Samuel Beckett.
Photo Jane Bown, The Guardian

That cheerfully bitter Irishman Samuel Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot. It's bleak, but it's also funny.  It's what I've heard called "the black Irish mood," where there's also always uproarious laughter. The Beckett quote above is not from Godot, but it might as well be. Some days during this season of discontent I think I can't stand it any more -- the full blossoming of Twitterman's lawless and unaccountable power-bender in the White House, that plus the left's incessant, habitual, not to forget suicidal bashing of fellow Democrats as if they are enemies and not in fact coalitional allies -- sometimes I want to turn off all screens, change the locks, and light out for the territory. Say goodbye to political science, and even voting, in some new Crystal City.

But I'll go on. I can't go on. You must go on.

Seeing three current and former mayors of Raleigh endorse Mike Bloomberg seems like Beckett-style absurdity. It adds to my fund of experience a kind of bumfuzzled acknowledgement of the contemporary reality: Money trumps everything. The world of tomorrow demands cash. Nothing else matters. Not history. Not mindset. Not proclivity. Democrats began selling out to Wall Street decades ago. Now embracing the likes of Mike Bloomberg.

Bloomberg's relentless TV spending convinces even some of my close friends that he is The One to successfully pound Trump into atoms. I think that's the main attraction. Most Democrats of whatever brand like seeing Trump roughed up, called out, pinned on the autopsy table. Even I can be appreciative that there's this real billionaire who has the unlimited funds to run all those attack ads against Trump. But put another rich man in charge of the Republic? I don't care he's good on climate change and gun control. I cannot believe he is the man to reform structural inequality. He's not the one I've been waiting for.