After a lot of teasing by Michael Bloomberg, today it looks like there will still be only one NYC billionaire running for President this year.“When I look at the data, it’s clear to me that if I entered the race, I could not win,” Bloomberg wrote on his own Bloomberg View Monday. The former Big Apple Mayor admitted today what has been clear for a while – the math doesn’t add up but he still doesn’t want Donald Trump in the White House.
“I have known Mr. Trump casually for many years, and we have always been on friendly terms. I even agreed to appear on The Apprentice — twice,” the billionaire says of the other Manhattan billionaire running for the Oval Office. “But he has run the most divisive and demagogic presidential campaign I can remember, preying on people’s prejudices and fears. Abraham Lincoln, the father of the Republican Party, appealed to our ‘better angels.'” Bloomberg adds: “Trump appeals to our worst impulses.”
While Trump rakes up wins across the nation in GOP primaries, Republican Bloomberg has come to the realization that Vice-President Joe Biden had on the Democratic side last fall – it’s too late in the game to be the winner of the big game.”Over the last several months, many Americans have urged me to run for president as an independent, and some who don’t like the current candidates have said it is my patriotic duty to do so,” Bloomberg wrote today. “I appreciate their appeals, and I have given the question serious consideration. The deadline to answer it is now, because of ballot access requirements.”
Despite reportedly putting together the pieces of a campaign organization over the past few months, Bloomberg’s 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. dream hit the hard wall of Constitutional and political reality – and the 3-term NYC Mayor couldn’t buy his way through that even if he really was willing to try.
“The fact is, even if I were to receive the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, victory would be highly unlikely, because most members of Congress would vote for their party’s nominee. Party loyalists in Congress — not the American people or the Electoral College — would determine the next president,” Bloomberg notes of a potential third party effort on his part. “As the race stands now, with Republicans in charge of both Houses, there is a good chance that my candidacy could lead to the election of Donald Trump or Senator Ted Cruz. That is not a risk I can take in good conscience.”
And one he will obviously not be getting in the arena to do now. Is a Hillary Clinton endorsement fair behind?
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