One of the things that's becoming increasingly clear as Bloomberg has emerged from behind his gauzy commercials is the fact that he's not a likable person. From the rarefied heights of his multi-billionaire status, he speaks about ordinary people in dismissive terms and apparently was a beast to women. At the debate, he came across as a supercilious automaton.

His campaign is well aware of his off-putting personality, so, beginning in March, it intends to spend over $1,250,000 a month paying people to say good things about him online:

Michael Bloomberg's presidential campaign is ramping up their social media reach by hiring hundreds of workers in California to post on their personal social media accounts in support of the billionaire. According to the Wall Street Journal, the campaign is hiring more than 500 'deputy digital organizers' to work 20 to 30 hours a week and receive $2,500 a month. Those employees will promote Bloomberg through posting about him daily on their social media pages and sending texts each week to everyone in their contact list. The multi-million dollar effort is launching in California ahead of the March 3 implemented nationwide, sources tell The Wall Street Journal. [snip] One of the suggested prompts supporting Bloomberg reads: 'The Fight for Equal Rights Has Been One of the Great Fights of Mike's Life.' While another reads: 'A new national poll confirms that the fastest growing movement is behind Mike Bloomberg.' The job application, which is publicly available, requires applicants to provide their social media handles.

It's not clear yet whether the people seeking these social media jobs must be actual Bloomberg-supporters who will get paid to do something they'd happily do for free. Alternatively, they could just be people looking for a paying gig willing to prostitute themselves for money.

Either way, the real question is whether this type of astroturfing will work. We know that people are extremely influenced by messages they see from friends on social networks. However, the first Democrat debate exposed Bloomberg's personality for the world to see. He's charmless, pedantic, condescending, and unable to react quickly.

Additionally, the Democrats' opposition research is steadily revealing that Bloomberg sees himself as somehow above other people. When he speaks disparagingly of blacks and Hispanics, women, or farmers, he doesn't seem driven by racial or sexist animus. Instead, he comes from a place in which other people are objects to be commented upon, moved around, frisked, or denigrated in ways that benefit him at the moment. To him, we're all pawns to advance his goals, whether it's a well run city or an opportunity to boast about his intellect (compared to "simple" farmers).

Lincoln famously said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Although many Democrats who fear a Sanders candidacy are looking to Bloomberg as their savior — ignoring the irony of a white plutocrat in a party that hates the white and the wealthy — candidates win only if ordinary people embrace them. In Bloomberg's case, no matter how much influencers repeat canned phrases about the wonders of Bloomberg, it's hard to imagine that the campaign can fool all of the people all of the time about Bloomberg's supposed virtues.