After months of being dismissed as a vanity candidate, Michael Bloomberg has emerged as a real player in the Democratic nomination fight. Panic over the rise of Sen. Bernie Sanders and the collapse of Joe Biden has played right into the hands of Bloomberg, who has been pitching himself as a more vigorous centrist alternative to the socialist wing of the party.
No doubt, Bloomberg’s unorthodox strategy of waiting until after the early primary states to make a move still makes him a long shot for the nomination, especially given his history as a Republican — which includes endorsing George W. Bush for reelection.
But Bloomberg does have an effectively unlimited bank account, and recent polls have put him as high as 17% nationally. This is significant because the threshold to win delegates in states and congressional districts is 15%. So even if Bloomberg is anywhere in the double digits, it should mean there are at least some states or districts where he’s higher than that, allowing him to win delegates.
Unlike other candidates who might have to drop out after failing to win states outright because they run out of money, Bloomberg can stay in the race as long as he wants. Even if he ends up piling on a bunch of second-, third-, or fourth-place finishes from Super Tuesday on March 3 until the final contest in the Virgin Islands on June 6, he could still end up with a few hundred delegates. That’s where things can get interesting.
Due to a number of changes in 2020 and the relatively large number of viable candidates, there is a better chance than usual that the primary season ends without any candidate having won a majority of delegates. Under new rules, officeholders and party officials known as superdelegates won’t be able to put a candidate over the top on the first ballot.
Instead, on the first ballot, there will be delegates who are pledged to a particular candidate based on state results but are not necessarily required to vote a particular way.
If the race comes down to Sanders and another more centrist candidate (Biden, Amy Klobuchar, or Pete Buttigieg), if it’s close enough, Bloomberg could theoretically ask his several hundred delegates to vote for the candidate of his choice, thus helping to play the role of kingmaker.
The optics of such a situation would be awful for Democrats, particularly if Sanders ends up being denied the nomination once again. It would almost be that after spending hundreds of millions of dollars, Bloomberg single-handedly amassed the power of hundreds of superdelegates and then was able to bypass rules preventing superdelegates from picking the winner.
But it’s something to keep in mind as the race continues to develop. Bloomberg could decide the winner even if he doesn’t win the nomination himself.
