Michael Bloomberg pointed out an unusual point of distinction when arguing why he is a better candidate than his rivals in the Democratic presidential race: his old age.
The billionaire former New York mayor responded to the suggestion his candidacy risks taking votes away from fellow centrist candidates Pete Buttigieg, 38, and former Vice President Joe Biden, 77, ultimately helping an ideological rival such as socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 78, win the Democratic presidential nomination.
“What’d I miss? Why? Am I not as important to this country?” Bloomberg, 78, told local New England news station WPRI on Wednesday. “I’ve been an American for longer than Mayor Pete has. I’ve been an American for longer than Joe Biden has. I have a right to run, as well, and the public can pick and choose.”
Bloomberg is 10 months and six days older than Biden. Both men were born in 1942.
Either of them or Sanders would be the oldest president ever elected. President Ronald Reagan, the current record-holder, was 77 when he left office in 1989. Four septuagenarians seek the Democratic presidential nomination: Bloomberg, Biden, Sanders, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 70.
In recent decades, Democrats won the presidency with candidates more than 20 years younger than their Republican competitors but lost with candidates who were similar in age to their rivals.
While Biden and Sanders have responded to doubts about their old age by arguing that their decades of experience are valuable, it is unusual for the older candidates to draw distinctions about their experience by pointing to a matter of months or years.
Bloomberg is skipping competing in the first four early nominating contest states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina and is running a high-cost national campaign hoping to win nominating delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Mar. 3 Super Tuesday states and beyond. He is in fourth place with 10.6% in the RealClearPolitics average of national primary polls, ahead of Buttigieg’s 7% but behind Biden’s 27%, Sanders’s 21.8%, and Warren’s 14.4%.
