I&I Editorial

After being trounced on Super Tuesday, Michael Bloomberg announced that he was “suspending” his campaign. He joins fellow billionaire Tom Steyer in the quitters’ camp.

It makes you wonder how these two succeeded in business when they are so utterly incompetent at selling themselves or their ideas. It also underscores how shrewd billionaire Donald Trump was in 2016.

Bloomberg built his entire strategy on winning big on Super Tuesday. His pitch to voters – in a series of endlessly repeated ads – was his competency. He was a self-made billionaire, he got things done, he was a proven leader, he was best suited to beat Trump.

Yet all Bloomberg had to show for his hundreds of millions was a win in American Samoa.

Even someone as arrogant as Bloomberg could not ignore how disastrous his plan turned out to be. Think about it: Bloomberg spent $464 million of his own money to win a grand total of 64 delegates. That works out to $7.2 million per delegate.

Another way to look at it: Bloomberg spent nearly $300 for each vote he got. That’s enough to buy every one of his supporters a Luger 9 mm pistol, or almost 4,000 rounds of AR-15 ammo.

Bloomberg hasn’t done much better with the money he’s plowed into other candidates.

From 2010 to 2014, he dropped $21.4 million on losing elections. He spent another $16 million over those years to push gun control and climate change solutions – and ended up with nothing to show for it. In fact, Colorado voters recalled two gun-control candidates Bloomberg backed in 2013.

In 2018, Bloomberg spent $20 million on the Senate Majority PAC to help Democrats make gains in the Senate. They lost seats.

But as bad as Bloomberg has been with his money, it doesn’t hold a candle to fellow liberal billionaire Tom Steyer.

Before he dropped out of the presidential race at the end of February, climate change alarmist Steyer had poured $253 million into his campaign.

For that, he won no delegates at all – zip, zero, nada. In fact, Steyer ended up spending almost $1,300 for each vote he managed to secure, enough to buy each of them 21.5 tons of bituminous coal.

Steyer also has a worse record than Bloomberg when it comes to getting his favorite candidates into office.

In 2016, Steyer and his NextGen Climate Action super PAC spent $100 million – Steyer himself spent more than any other individual that year – only to lose eight out his 14 races. That included Hillary Clinton’s White House bid and Senate races in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Missouri, Florida and Wisconsin.

Steyer did even worse in 2014, when he spent $74 million and lost 70% of his races. As the Washington Free Beacon noted, in all but one of those, the Republican candidates gained ground after his NextGen started running ads.

This, by the way, is in sharp contrast to another billionaire businessman named Donald Trump. Unlike Bloomberg and Steyer, Trump was extraordinarily careful with his campaign money. He also had a solid plan to win, a message that actually resonated with voters, and carried it out with great discipline.

In fact, at this point in his campaign for the nomination in 2016, Trump had spent just $33 million – less than any of his Republican opponents. That’s half of what Biden has so far spent, and a third of the cash Sen. Bernie Sanders has burned through.

We can think of no better endorsement of Trump than the fact that Bloomberg and Steyer would be the sort of businessmen giving advice and counsel in a Joe Biden administration.

— Written by John Merline

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