Have you ever seen a cat torture a wounded mouse? It happened last night when Elizabeth Warren exposed multi-billionaire Mike Bloomberg as a not-ready-for-prime-time player who looks great in ads but wilts under fire.
No amount of money could mask his inexperience on a contentious debate stage, nor could it stop his rivals – most notably, Warren – from exposing his weakness on an issue of vital importance to the young working women whose votes Democrats will sorely need in November.
Maybe what happened to Bloomberg in Vegas won’t matter in two weeks when Super Tuesday’s voters hold sway, maybe his ubiquitous commercials will keep him afloat (and keep splintering the anyone-but-Sanders majority), and maybe Warren’s crisp comeback performance in Vegas won’t buoy her in the end. But what we do know, for now, is that Bloomberg can’t lighten his baggage by simply writing more checks.
Much of last night’s debate was the usual Democratic disaster, a cacophonous clashfest that probably drove half the TV audience to Netflix, especially when everyone began parsing (for the umpteenth time) the granular particulars of their health care plans – while never once mentioning that Donald Trump, in his new budget, wants to cut Medicare and Medicaid, and that he’s in federal court trying to kill Obamacare in its entirety. Indeed, they were so busy knifing each other – with Amy Klobuchar poised to shiv Pete Buttigieg for real – that nobody thought to bring up Trump’s pardoning of white-collar friends and his destruction of the Justice Department.
But the big story was Bloomberg, who wasn’t exactly fast on his feet when his rivals brought the heat. It’s known that at least 17 women have sued Bloomberg’s financial services company during the past few decades, and that at least three have specifically targeted Bloomberg for fostering a hostile work environment; according to court records, he allegedly said, “I’d like to do that piece of meat,” and, to one woman, “I’d do you in a second.” One company employee reportedly compiled Bloomberg’s crudest remarks, most notably his alleged boast that his computers “will do everything, including give you (oral sex). I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.”
Warren had all kinds of incentives to go after Bloomberg last night. She’s trying to rebound from tepid showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, she’s losing the progressive market to Bernie’s bellowing salesmanship, and unless she enjoys a reversal of fortune, Super Tuesday could be her last stand. But Bloomberg’s behavior toward women – especially his refusal to free complainants from their NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) – is an issue that’s right in her wheelhouse.
She targeted Bloomberg during her opening remarks: “I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians.’ And, no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg…Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another.”
Not long after, Bloomberg offered his defense: “I have no tolerance for the kind of behavior that the MeToo movement has exposed…In my foundation, the person that runs it is a woman, 70 percent of the people there are women. In my company, lots and lots of women have big responsibilities. They get paid exactly the same as men. And in my City Hall, the person, the top person, my deputy mayor was a woman, and 40 percent of our commissioners were women.”
That’s when Warren pounced. For months she’s been peeved about Bloomberg’s NDAs. Now she got the chance to confront him.
Warren: “I hope you heard what his defense was. ‘I’ve been nice to some women.’ That just doesn’t cut it. The mayor has to stand on his record. And what we need to know is exactly what’s lurking out there. He has gotten some number of women – dozens, who knows – to sign nondisclosure agreements both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace. So, Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those nondisclosure agreements, so we can hear their side of the story?”
Bloomberg: “We have a very few nondisclosure agreements.”
Warren: “How many is that?”
Bloomberg: “Let me finish.”
Warren: “How many is that?”
Bloomberg: “None of them accuse me of doing anything, other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told.”
The audience in the hall didn’t like that remark.
Bloomberg: “And let me just – and let me – there’s agreements between two parties that wanted to keep it quiet and that’s up to them. They signed those agreements, and we’ll live with it.”
Warren: “So, wait, when you say it is up to – I just want to be clear. ‘Some’ is how many? And when you say they signed them and they wanted them, if they wish now to speak out and tell their side of the story about what it is they allege, that’s now OK with you? You’re releasing them on television tonight? Is that right? Is that right? Tonight?”
Bloomberg: “Senator, the company and somebody else, in this case – a man or a woman or it could be more than that – they decided when they made an agreement they wanted to keep it quiet for everybody’s interests. They signed the agreements and that’s what we’re going to live with.”
Warren: “I’m sorry. No, the question is – ”
Bloomberg: “I heard your question.”
Warren: ” – are the women bound by being muzzled by you, and you could release them from that immediately? Because, understand, this is not just a question of the mayor’s character. This is also a question about electability. We are not going to beat Donald Trump with a man who has who-knows- how-many nondisclosure agreements and the drip, drip, drip of stories of women saying they have been harassed and discriminated against. That’s not what we do as Democrats.”
This struck me as the night’s key exchange, even though Bloomberg took heat on everything from his stop-and-frisk policy (Joe Biden, seeking to return from the dead, hit him hard) to his ’04 endorsement of George W. Bush (Bernie Sanders brought that up). Bloomberg at one point even said that democratic socialist Bernie is really a commie (“We’re not going to throw out capitalism. We tried. Other countries tried that. It was called communism”), which surely made Trump happy, because if Bernie wins the nomination, we’ll hear that label a lot.
And when it was all over, a Bloomberg spokesman said: “He was just warming up tonight.” We’ll see. It might just be easier to drop another hundred million on ads that place him in pristine settings where nary an errant wind blows.