Days after discussing his ‘path to the nomination” on Fox News, billionaire Michael Bloomberg has walked off the trail entirely, proving he can be beaten. (Screen snip, YouTube, Fox News)
Wednesday morning’s announcement by billionaire Michael Bloomberg that he is suspending his presidential campaign confirms what the Super Tuesday election results demonstrated: Bloomberg with his massive fortune can be overcome. Defeated. Beaten.
That was the most important lesson for beleaguered American gun owners, hidden in the shadows of Joe Biden’s “comeback kid” Super Tuesday victories through the South and Bernie Sanders’ wins in New Hampshire and the West.
Bloomberg has thrown his support to Biden, obviously in an effort to prevent Sanders from winning the Democrat nomination in July.
Remember, Bloomberg has always said the reason he entered the race was to defeat Donald Trump.
Bloomberg’s announcement came only days after a Fox News Town Hall meeting in Manassas, Va., featuring the former New York mayor as the lone guest, erupted into a brief, but significant gun rights protest discussed here Tuesday.
According to a Fox News estimate, Bloomberg spent more than $550 million in a campaign effort that provided a victory in American Samoa. As Fox put it, “Bloomberg’s $224 million in ad spending in just Super Tuesday states means that he spent $5.1 million per delegate that he earned. The former New York City mayor’s most expensive delegates came from Texas, where his $54 million in advertising bought him a total of four delegates.”
Bloomberg will reportedly continue supporting Democratic causes—i.e. gun control and anti-gun candidates—but he has left the campaign trail, setting up a potentially bruising battle between Biden and Sanders.
His decision to back Biden could be the catalyst for an internal war within the Democrat party, where Sanders’ supporters vehemently dislike the Wall Street wealth Bloomberg represents. They also may feel once again betrayed by the DNC and party establishment, as they did in 2016 following allegations of favoritism by party officials toward Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But Super Tuesday proved the key to beating Bloomberg and overcoming his gun prohibition agenda is to vote.
Dollar bills don’t cast ballots, people do. When they don’t, they wind up with gun rights nightmares like Virginia, a situation that is unlikely to ever happen again, provided Commonwealth rights activists go to the polls rather than sit on their couches.
Sanders likes to talk about a “movement” in support of his Socialist agenda.
What else can it be called but a “movement” when 22,000 armed citizens show up at the capitol in Richmond? Gov. Ralph Northam and his Democrat majority largely ignored that, likely at their electoral peril in 2021.
Last November in Virginia, the voter turnout was roughly 40 percent. That lethargy allowed anti-gun Democrats to take control of the General Assembly for the first time in years.
The Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund poured $2.5 million into the 2019 Virginia election, and during the recent 10th Democratic debate, the former New York City mayor caught himself in mid-sentence nearly admitting that he “bought” some mid-term congressional races in 2018.
Bloomberg’s dismal Super Tuesday performance came because Democrats turning out for Biden or Sanders decided their votes weren’t for sale, and gun owners can take a lesson from that.
When voters with a common cause give up maybe an hour or two of their time to exercise a right and fulfill a responsibility, they can overcome a mountain of money. Super Tuesday proved it. People stood for hours in some states to cast their votes.
In Washington state, this is a particularly prickly issue because voters don’t even need to get off the couch. It’s all mail-in voting; you just fill out the ballot, stick it in an envelope and mail it or drop it in a ballot box outside the nearest public library, town hall or other location.
The challenge to grassroots activists from now on to November is to make sure fellow gun owners and their families and friends vote. Set up voter registration tables at gun shows, county fairs, spring and summer community picnics or other fair weather festivals. It’s not impossible, it just has to be done.
Coming up March 10 are primaries in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington. One week later, on the 17th, primary voters turn out in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio.
With Bloomberg throwing his financial weight behind Biden, grassroots activists have a daunting task ahead. Biden’s weekend declaration that anti-gun former candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke would be his gun control point man sent a clear signal to gun owners that the 2020 election is for all the marbles.
This will not be the year to not cast a ballot.
