When I was active in a local Democratic PAC between 2006 and 2010, I was elected Treasurer. I wanted flawless accounting practice and conformance to FEC and FPPC reporting. When I could no longer do it because of responsibilities at home, they reverted to "loose and lazy". This all ties in to their idea of "undemocratic appearances". Whoever would succeed me could abjure GAAP, common-sense auditing and other matters . . . because . . . "They were elected."
So I saw something of the same with the introduction of Bloomberg in the debate last night. I thought he conducted himself with a certain grace despite attacks from the others. He's not perfect. But he came up from modest circumstances, got a BS in EE from Johns Hopkins, then Harvard Business School, and he was in the right place at the right time at the dawn of the microcomputer age -- seeing an opportunity to reap golden crumbs from the investment houses by providing instant information from "Bloomberg Terminal".
The Trumpers all worship money as a measure of everything. Bloomberg himself needs to read up a bit further on the history of socialism, to see that beliefs barely get folks a dime for a cup of coffee and that the only beliefs of any merit in this game are those related to common sense and the Constitution.
But, giving the ignorant Trumpers their Mammon-Pablum to peel off more votes, Bloomberg as "philanthropist" could spend his $400 million to take back the White House,, while the Dems could later sit around a table with him to hammer out a policy and agenda incorporating the views of other candidates. And they could then free up their own war-chest to re-take the Senate.
It's a War Strategy -- not a "Democracy Strategy". I'm fine with much of what Bernie dreams, but there are "appearances" and there is "substance". With Bloomberg, the Trumpers would be mollified with appearances, while those of us who are still sane could pursue a progressive agenda with less of an ideological spotlight on it.
All the nice debates about health-care, climate change, unequal wealth distribution are secondary to rescuing our government from destruction by introducing Trumpie Termites from within. We're lucky, just for today's announcement over Stone's sentencing, that the judiciary is still mildly independent. We're not so lucky, for the appointment of another asshole as Director of National Intelligence.
The Virus must be quarantined and expunged from the Oval Office . . . .