He Might Be Our Only Hope
The election in Great Britain was pretty disheartening. I’m starting to wonder if it’s even possible to overcome modern propaganda campaigns. Even people who believe in election interference only ever seem to believe it’s others being affected. Human nature makes it really tough for us to revisit our own conclusions and biases.
In the case of Jeremy Corbyn, the question isn’t whether the accusations against him are wholely true, it’s a question of why now? Why has all of this negative information about him come out at this time? There weren’t any new revelations that couldn’t have been known when he was chosen as leader of the party. One possibility might be that, at the time of his selection, people were intentionally fed information that made Corbyn seem more favorable than he really was, and for this latest election, people were fed different information.
Given this latest influence campaign, and some discussions I recently had with my New Yorker friends, my opinion of Michael Bloomberg has softened considerably. I realized that while I advocate using a single standard when judging the candidates and forgiving past mistakes, I was using a different standard for Bloomberg, and withholding forgiveness simply because I was personally affected by one of his past mistakes. That wasn't fair or consistent with what I’ve asked of others.
The sad truth is that Bloomberg might be the only candidate with the resources to compete against the massive propaganda and hacking campaign we’ll see in 2020. Bloomberg’s net worth is about $54 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, if every man, woman, child, and infant in the US, gave $27 to Bernie or another candidate, it would total about $9 billion. Bloomberg could spend double that and not really even feel it. He could spent triple that amount, and he’d still be worth $25 billion more than Tom Steyer. Bloomberg also has a TV station, and he might just be savvy enough to have started building out troll farms.
I’m not completely behind Bloomberg yet, but he’s moved up quite a bit in my personal rankings. I’m still hopeful that everyone who doesn’t want Trump to be president will coalesce around the eventual nominee and ignore any misinformation about that candidate directed their way, but that hope might be further diminished over time, and Bloomberg might rise a bit more.
I’m looking forward to the upcoming debate, but Bloomberg won’t appear in it, as he doesn’t accept donations, and therefore he won’t qualify for any of the debates. Some other great candidates won’t qualify either. I get all of that, and I won’t complain about the DNC rules, as the time has long since passed. That said, I think it would be great of the non-qualifying candidates got together and had their own debate. If no TV station will carry it, they could stream it.
In any case, here’s my latest personal rankings of the Dem candidates:
