I want to talk about presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg. Not his policies or his proposals or his electability. I want to talk about his strategy. He wants to be President, but failing that, he has vowed to spend millions to defeat the one we have. Here’s a capsule of his background:
Bloomberg is a self-made billionaire. His father earned a modest living as a bookkeeper.
Mike Bloomberg put himself through Johns Hopkins University and Harvard.
He got a job on Wall Street, then got laid off. Then he had an idea. He started his own company gathering and disseminating the news and information stock brokers and money men use to make buy/sell decisions.
His fortune is estimated at 54 billion dollars.
Bloomberg was the mayor of New York for over a decade. He understands politics and how it works.
The veteran politician believes the entire field of Democratic presidential hopefuls are wasting money, energy and time chasing primary and caucus victories in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Those are the traditional early-voting states, but Bloomberg notes these aren’t traditional times.
Bloomberg has begun spending serious money on campaign ads in most of the so-called battleground states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida and Arizona.
These states, also known as swing states, have enough voters to significantly impact the outcome of a national election. Many of their voters seem to be in flux and up for grabs.
Kevin Sheekey is Bloomberg’s presidential campaign manager:
“If you think about what the schedule should look like this time, if, in fact, we as a party wanted to do better, Wisconsin would be the first state, Michigan would be the second, you could have Pennsylvania as the third and North Carolina as the fourth.
“And if you did, we would be knocking on doors for the last year in the states of Wisconsin and Michigan. Right now, Donald Trump is running unopposed in those states. He’s doing rallies practically every week in those states. He has gotten stronger, not weaker in the state of Wisconsin, a state he won by a mere 23,000 votes last time.
“And what Mike is saying is, we have to look at these rules if we don’t want to run the risk of losing these elections. Right now Donald Trump is winning a national election because he’s ahead in Wisconsin, he’s even in Michigan. He’s probably ahead in Arizona and he’s probably ahead in Florida. And that’s just a real problem for the Party.”
As a career reporter and documentary producer I’m reluctant to give any political candidate free media in terms of their unfiltered campaign ads.
But I’m going to show you one of Mike Bloomberg’s ads because of the content and what it says about where the fight should be fought in the 2020 election:
(How We Will Win Ad)
(Male Voice) Remember 2016?
(Male Voice) Do you want that to happen again?
(Male Voice) I want progress. I want hope.
(Woman on Camera) Hey Democrats! It’s time to pay attention.
(Male Voice) We need to wake up.
(Man on Camera) In Michigan, the only one campaigning here is Donald Trump.
(Man on Camera) As a Pennsylvanian, I understand there’s a caucus in Iowa, but what about here?
(Woman’s Voice, then on-camera) Trump will run unopposed in every state that will actually decide the general election.
(Man’s Voice, then on-camera) All this effort and all this money and none of it goes to help the one election that really matters?
(Man on Camera) By the looks of it he’s trying to win Pennsylvania once again. He’s here all the time.
(Woman on Camera) Here, Trump is actually winning.
(Man on Camera) We need the Democrats in Michigan, too.
(Woman on Camera) Here in Arizona, too.
(Woman on Camera) And here, too, in Colorado.
(Two men in unison) And in Pennsylvania.
(Man on Camera) Wisconsin
(Man on Camera) And Texas, too.
(Woman’s Voice) Rebuilding America starts today.
(Man’s Voice) And all of us need to be heard.
(Woman on Camera) If we include all of America we will win.
(Man’s Voice) We can’t afford to wait to start campaigning in the rest of the country.
(Man on Camera) It’s time to think bigger and act bolder.
(Woman on Camera) We need a President for all of us.
(Man on Camera) All of us.
(Two men in unison) All of us.
(Woman’s Voice) We need a candidate who has the strength to rival and defeat Trump.
(Man’s voice, then on camera) Wherever you are, whoever you are, you matter in this process.
(Woman’s Voice) Asking you to believe with us.
(Man’s Voice) It is possible.
(Woman’s Voice) It is possible.
(Man’s Voice) It is possible.
(Man On Camera) This is how we win.
TV spots like that are in heavy rotation in selected media markets.
If you take a look at where the White House Flim-Flam man is going for public rallies lately, it isn’t Iowa. It isn’t New Hampshire. Invariably, it’s in a battleground state like Florida with a lot of voters and significant weight in the electoral college. In terms of a winning campaigning strategy, I think Mike Bloomberg is right. Candidate time should be invested, campaign ad money should be spent and the fight should be fought in places that can and will move the needle on election night. If you need additional convincing—there’s this: Bloomberg’s ad campaign is said to be irritating the crap out of the Disgrace in the White House.
Leave a Reply