Michael Bloomberg is the great rich hope for elite media types everywhere. He promises to be able to do something no mere non-billionaire can: dispense with voters, activists and political parties altogether. As he said yesterday:
“We all know that spending decisions in Washington are driven by whatever will attract votes and campaign cash,” he said in criticizing the government for running up enormous budget deficits over the last few years.
Yep, it is really a horrendous state of affairs when elected officials in a republic pass legislation that is designed to appeal to the people who elected them. As Digby notes:
Imagine that. Attracting votes and campaign cash. How tacky. Yes, what we clearly need is benevolent billionaire dictators who ignore the voters and care about nothing but their own interests.
Yes, someone who does not need voters, donors, or political parties and who will instead act entirely in the interest of media elites is the only person who can truly pull this country together. It is a good thing he doesn’t need voters, since they don’t like him very much:
So, Michael Bloomberg is less popular than the top three Democrats and the top three Republicans running for President right now. He even has lower overall favorables than Ron Paul. Fortunately, since he doesn’t think appealing to the voters is a worthy activity for elected officials, it actually seems like this low favorable rating was one of his goals.
NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll, Nov. 1-5, 2007, 1,509 adults, MoE 2.5
Clinton 44%, Giuliani 35%, Buchanan 12%
Clinton 42%, Giuliani 29%, Bloomberg 10%
It would appear that the ultimate problem with the High Broderist desire for Bloomberg is that not only do the pro-Bloomberg types have no need for the voters and activists, the voters and activists have no need for Bloomberg, either. While clearly doing away with voters and activists altogether is indeed one of the ideals of the Bloomberg backers, unfortunately for them that is currently impossible in our system of government. I mean, even in order to steal an election in America you have to be close to winning, and Bloomberg has a worse favorable ratio than Mitt Romney, has a lower favorable total than Ron Paul, and attracts fewer voters than Pat Buchanan.
Of course, since the support of actual voters is an anathema to the Bloomberg supporters (despite six months of poll masturbation), none of this will actually matter. They would rather live in Brooklyn than actually stoop to the level of appealing to voters.
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