Bloomberg’s rise in US poll race provides foil for Sanders

Bloomberg

Michael Bloomberg’s sudden arrival in the Democratic spotlight has put him under new scrutiny from all of his opponents. But Bernie Sanders has taken him on with unparalleled zeal.
Sanders is holding up Bloomberg as the embodiment of everything the democratic socialist rails against. He is a billionaire with ties to Wall Street who is self-funding his campaign. His past comments about policing, women, minorities and farmers are all grist for Sanders’ rallies.
“Mr. Bloomberg, like anybody else, has a right to run for president,” Sanders told a rally of more than 6,000 people in
Richmond, a city near San Francisco, drawing boos against Bloomberg. “He does not have a right to buy the presidency. Especially after being the mayor of New York and having a racist stop and frisk policy, especially after opposing — imagine a multibillionaire opposing a raise in the minimum wage.”
Bloomberg now supports a $15 per-hour federal minimum wage but in 2014 called raising it “one of the most misguided things that we can do.” Previous comments have also surfaced suggesting a drop in redlining — the practice of denying loans to minorities — for contributing to the 2008 financial crisis, that health care should be denied to very old people, and that farming was easy.
Sanders’ jabs at the former New York mayor reflect the new shape of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, with Sanders’ riding high as the leader of the party’s progressive wing — and Bloomberg emerging as the most well-funded candidate to stop him from the moderate side of the party. Many establishment Democrats believe Sanders’ positions are too extreme to defeat President Donald Trump.
But so far, none of the centrists in the race — Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar — have been able to knock Sanders from the top of the polls, leaving a Sanders-Bloomberg battle to lead the Democratic ticket a possibility.
Bloomberg qualified for his first debate of the cycle in Las Vegas after he reached 19% support in a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released on Tuesday. It was his fourth poll with more than 10% support, meeting the Democratic National Committee’s new threshold for qualification.
Sanders won the popular vote in the Iowa caucuses, won the New Hampshire primary and is leading in California, the biggest delegate prize on Super Tuesday, March 3, the first time Bloomberg’s name appears on a ballot.
Bloomberg has spent more than $400 million advertising across the country, including the Super Tuesday states, where he is staking his candidacy.
Sanders has been devoting
increasing portions of his speeches to Bloomberg through the weekend as past comments drip out daily on social media, and campaign surrogates like New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York Mayor Bill De Blasio have done the same.
Bloomberg had so far largely ignored his Democratic rivals
in favour of Trump. But Bloomberg fired back at Sanders and promised he will be more aggressive in responding from now on.