Former New York City mayor and future 125-year-old man Michael Bloomberg says he will not run for president, again, despite the many people who are begging him to jump in the race and his steadfast belief that he would totally win the general election.
After teasing a possible campaign for months, the perennial presidential ponderer announced Tuesday that he was bowing out in order to concentrate his efforts in the private sector. "Until 2021, and possibly longer, our only real hope for progress lies outside of Washington," Bloomberg wrote in a piece published in the opinion section of his website.
To that end, the 77-year-old businessman plans to launch a new phase of the Beyond Coal campaign, which he is calling Beyond Carbon. It aims to begin moving America away from oil and gas "as quickly as possible." A few weeks prior to unveiling this initiative, Bloomberg ripped the Green New Deal as a "pie in the sky" proposal that was "disingenuous" to promote.
As for his decision not to run, Bloomberg says he recognized the slim chance of pulling out a victory among the many Democratic primary contenders—an increasingly crowded field currently led by a different aging moderate with views sometimes indistinguishable from GOP orthodoxy. Bloomberg, a former Republican, also cautioned Democrats not to allow unnamed outsiders to "drag the party to an extreme that would diminish our chances in the general election."
If he were to run—which, again, he will not—Bloomberg assured readers: "I believe I would defeat Donald Trump in a general election."
You may remember that in his last flirtation with the presidency—which ended nearly three years ago to the day—Bloomberg indicated that he would only run if Bernie Sanders captured the Democratic nomination. Bloomberg, who is worth $56 billion, went on to equate the "demagoguery" of Sanders and Trump, while frequently asserting his belief that voters wanted sensible, centrist leadership over "scapegoats or pie-in-the-sky promises.”
In his op-ed today, the media magnate touted his record of winning elections—if not necessarily predicting them—which he said was "in no small part because I’ve never stuck my finger in the wind to decide what I should believe." Indeed, the man has still not disavowed the racially biased and unconstitutional policing strategy that he championed, or the homelessness and affordable housing epidemics that exploded under his tenure.
Next up: What will the wind tell Mayor Bill de Blasio about his dubious presidential aspirations? What about Governor Andrew Cuomo?
