https://spectator.org/the-bloom-is-off/
The attacks on Michael Bloomberg came early and often at Wednesday’s debate in Las Vegas, but none of them, of course, touched on his infamous “kill it” comment to a pregnant subordinate. No, the party of abortion at all stages wasn’t going to touch that one. Instead, Elizabeth Warren focused on Bloomberg’s thoughts about “horse-faced lesbians” and “fat broads.”
Bloomberg has paid advisers millions of dollars to prepare him for just such moments, but he still acted like he was answering the challenges for the first time. He came off as cold and flat-footed — the unlikeable technocrat trying woodenly to make himself palatable to a left-wing audience with half-hearted answers.
It wasn’t until late in the debate that he seemed to loosen up a little bit and hit Sanders with a zinger about being a socialist millionaire with three homes. “What a country,” said Bloomberg. Of course, that didn’t go down well either, since the Democrats don’t think much of America. One would never know that the American economy is thriving from these Democratic gloomfests, where the candidates never feel slightest compunction to grapple with positive economic indices under Trump. Talk about an out-of-touch party — its rhetoric befits the Great Depression, not an economy in which the stock market spikes as unemployment plunges.
Bloomberg was the only candidate who came close to acknowledging how ridiculous the Democrats sound as they debate the virtues of socialism. But that comment elicited a groan, too.
Bloomberg would have done better had he continued to mock his opponents in that vein. But he couldn’t decide which direction to go in the debate. He spent much of it getting tangled up in half-baked apologies designed to improve his standing with progressives. His answer on stop-and-frisk lacked all coherence, because he didn’t have the guts to acknowledge that it actually worked and that it is not inherently racist.
