February 16, 2020
Over the past several days, we have learned that the political manipulation of the Justice Department goes far beyond the ham-handed interference with Roger Stone’s sentence and extends into any case involving Trump’s political allies… or enemies, (Source: “William Barr Moves to Take the Reins of Politically Charged Cases,” by Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman, The New York Times, 2/14/20). Barr’s complaint that Trump’s tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job” was less an assertion of independence than a recognition that Trump had thrust Barr’s machinations into an uncomfortable spotlight.
As Rachel Maddow pointed out, for Trump, the public announcement of his use of the Justice Department as a personal tool for retribution is precisely the point. Trump’s actions have already had the desired chilling effect. Federal prosecutors have already admitted that they are wary of bringing politically sensitive cases, (Source: “After Stone Case, Prosecutors Say They Fear Pressure From Trump,” by Katie Brenner, Charlie Savage, Sharon LaFreniere and Ben Protess, The New York Times, 2/12/20).
As we watch the perversion of the Justice Department into a tool to serve the whims of a corrupt and racist autocrat and the wholesale abandonment of the Rule Of Law, we are desperate to back the candidate that is guaranteed to defeat Trump. As we read of Trump’s plan to send Border Patrol S.W.A.T. teams into sanctuary cities to hunt immigrants like prey, the consequences of four more years of Trump become blisteringly clear, (Source: “Border Patrol Will Deploy Elite Tactical Agents to Sanctuary Cities,” by Caitlin Dickerson and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, The New York Times, 2/14/20).
In this context, and given his $300 million dollar media blitz, Bloomberg’s sudden emergence makes sense. After all, if neither you, nor anyone you love, have been slammed against a wall and frisked for no reason, it is easy to see Bloomberg as a vast improvement over Trump. Bloomberg understands the existential threat posed by climate change and has literally contributed millions to efforts to address it, bankrolling the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal,” and “Beyond Carbon” campaigns. He has been a staunch advocate for gun control and a supporter of abortion rights, contributing generously to Planned Parenthood. But as Alexander Burns and Nicholas Kulish detail in their deep dive analysis of Bloomberg’s philanthropic and political contributions, his largesse was as much about consolidating future political support and silencing potential critics as it was an expression of his genuine policy priorities, (Source: “Bloomberg’s Billions: How the Candidate Built an Empire of Influence,” by Alexander Burns and Nicholas Kulish, The New York Times, 2/15/20).
It is much more puzzling to explain the surge in African American support for Bloomberg. He was the architect of a vast expansion of “stop-and-frisk” that turned the cops into an occupying force in Black and Brown neighborhoods. Under Bloomberg, the number of stops increased by 700%! Black and brown New Yorkers were “nine times as likely to be stopped” as white New Yorkers even though white New Yorkers were “twice as likely to be found with a gun,” (Source: “Why ‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Inflamed Black and Hispanic Neighborhoods,” by Ashley Southall, The New York Times, 11/17/19, emphasis added).
What cognitive dissonance has Black elected officials and rank and file Black voters lining up to support another pugnacious New York billionaire? His Road to Damascus apology for stop and frisk rings hollow in view of recently unearthed comments from 2015 in which he said, “95% of your murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description, xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16-25…The way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them against the wall and frisk them,” (Source: “Should Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk record disqualify him?” by Phillip V. McHarris, The Washington Post, 2/16/20).
What demands have Black elected officials made of Bloomberg in exchange for their support? What evidence is there that Bloomberg even understands the vast harm he inflicted on thousands of innocent Black and Latinx citizens, many of whom were children? Does the average Black voter simply fear that it will take an oligarch to defeat an oligarch and that a benevolent despot is the best we dare to hope for? Are we offering our sons and brothers as sacrificial lambs on the altar in order to save the planet from a madman who would gleefully watch it burn? These are dark times and there is no simple answer. As we make our choice all we can do is try to be sure that we won’t look back and say that we “sold our birthright for a mess of pottage.”