Michael Bloomberg warned Bernie Sanders could cost the Democratic Party control of the House if he leads the ticket in November.
Bloomberg, a former New York City mayor who is running for the party’s presidential nomination, refused to accept that the Vermont senator and early front-runner is unstoppable during an interview that aired on MSNBC on Friday after being asked if he spent $400 million on his campaign just to lose to Sanders.
“I believe that if Bernie Sanders gets the nomination, he will lose to Donald Trump. He will make sure that the Senate stays in Republican hands,” Bloomberg said. “He will flip the House back to the Republicans, and even down-ballot, he’s going to hurt the Democrats.”
The 78-year-old billionaire blamed gerrymandering for exacerbating threat to the Democrats’ election prospects.
“So you will have a lot of gerrymandering down-ballot in states which will hurt the country for a long time. But worse, at the federal level, you will have a whole bunch of judges, probably even two Supreme Court justices, that the Republicans will appoint and those judicial decisions that come out of that will be devastating for this country for decades,” he said.
Bloomberg, who entered the 2020 race late and skipped the early primary contests to focus on Super Tuesday states, argued that Sanders is seen as the front-runner only because he has been running for president “for years.” Despite his pessimistic outlook on a Sanders nomination, Bloomberg vowed to support whoever the Democratic Party nominates.
“I’ve criticized the party loyalty where they say you have to vote for the candidate, everybody gets on board, ‘of course, I’ll vote for him,’ and they don’t really mean it. And I think Donald Trump got elected because of that kind of loyalty to the party,” Bloomberg said. “A lot of people in the [Republican] party didn’t like him. But in this case, the alternative to the Democratic candidates, even Bernie Sanders, is so bad I’ve said that I will vote for the Democratic candidate, even if it’s Bernie Sanders.”
Bloomberg joked that he was “off the hook” for supporting Sanders’s campaign financially because the socialist said he would not accept the billionaire’s help to defeat President Trump if he is the nominee. Bloomberg also acknowledged his promise to continue funding his massive campaign staff to work for the Democratic Party, even if he is not the nominee, to ensure that Trump is not reelected.
Bloomberg said he would consider “everybody” to be his running mate and was asked specifically about California Sen. Kamala Harris, who dropped out of the 2020 contest in December, and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Bloomberg said he would consider Harris, but noted the former California attorney general holds the same “tough on crime” label that he earned while supporting the controversial stop-and-frisk policing practice as mayor of New York City. As for Abrams, Bloomberg said he is one of her biggest supporters.
“She’s very competent,” Bloomberg said of Abrams. “I may be her biggest supporter, funder. I’m certainly one of [the biggest supporters] for her initiative to get out the vote and register people.”
He said it was “too early” to give formal consideration to any vice-presidential candidate.
