Michael Bloomberg is (probably) running for president as a Democrat. Apparently, he has decided to take the Hillary Clinton approach — that is, hold your finger in the air and flip-flop your previously deeply-held positions whichever way the political winds are blowing.
At issue is the former New York City mayor’s weekend apology for his decades-long support for “stop and frisk” policing policy. On Sunday, Bloomberg decided to blatantly pander to black voters and declare that he was “wrong” and “sorry” for ever supporting the policy that has formed an enormous part of his mayoral legacy.
I’m not buying it. At all.
Stop and frisk was always a reprehensible, authoritarian policy (which is unfortunately quite on-brand for Bloomberg). Just think about it: Bloomberg and his acolytes actually allowed police to stop, detain, question, and search anyone they came across who “looked dangerous” (or something). That’s a dystopian policy straight out of a police state, and it’s hard to imagine a law enforcement practice more ripe for abuse.
And abuse it, the police did indeed. This paragraph from the New York Times pretty much sums up the racist effects that stop and frisk had on New Yorkers:
As far as proponents, such as Bloomberg until literally yesterday, love to point out, the practice did coincide with a decrease in crime in the city. However, there’s no clear causal link here.
As the Times noted, “even when stops were phased out toward the end of [Bloomberg’s] administration, and then decreased sharply under his successor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, crime rates continued to plunge to new lows unseen since the 1950s.”
So, Bloomberg’s mea culpa for stop and frisk is certainly warranted by the drawbacks of the policy. But given that he’s spent over a decade defending it — including as recently as this year — the candidate’s conveniently-timed change of heart reeks of political calculation, rather than any genuine evolution or reconsideration.
NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams expressed skepticism to the Times. “Forgive many of us for questioning apologies a decade late and on the eve of a presidential run,” he said. “It is not nearly enough to erase the legacy of the systemic abuses of stop and frisk on the people whose lives were harmed by over-policing, nor the communities criminalized by it.”
Even many supporters of stop and frisk, such as The Federalist’s David Marcus, know the mayor’s flip-flop is disingenuous. Marcus writes that “Bloomberg’s change of heart is not the result of any new information, its pure politics, plain and simple.” He is right.
The mayor’s calculation is certainly correct that stop and frisk has fallen out of fashion. But all the woke evolution in the world won’t do Bloomberg any good if voters view him as an unprincipled fraud. Just ask Clinton how that worked out for her.
