There are a million reasons Michael Bloomberg shouldn’t be president.
Since the former New York City mayor filed for the Alabama Democratic primary and indicated that he’s probably going to get in the 2020 race, both sides have quickly pointed these reasons out. For the Left, Bloomberg is an old, white, straight, archaic, billionaire centrist — the last thing most liberals want in a Democratic nominee right now. For small-government libertarians and conservatives alike, Bloomberg represents a toxic mix of nanny-state politics and big-government centrism, with his affinity for banning things such as vaping and large sodas only outdone by his opposition to even the most minimal criminal justice reform such as marijuana decriminalization.
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But there’s a much simpler reason you shouldn’t support Bloomberg for president, even if you’re sympathetic to his policy positions: The former mayor is a rampant sexist, with a long and disturbing history of misogynistic comments and behavior toward women.
For instance, a New York Magazine journalist reported that in his time spent with Bloomberg, he degraded women based on their appearance, in one instance ignoring the conversation they were in to gesture at a woman and say, “Look at the ass on her.” The same article recounts a female politician detailing how the mayor shamed her for wearing flats rather than heels and demeaned the gray streaks in her hair.
New York Magazine also reported on a list of “Bloombergisms,” common phrases and quips the mayor used to make. These reportedly included “If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale’s,” and “I know for a fact that any self-respecting woman who walks past a construction site and doesn’t get a whistle will turn around and walk past again and again until she does get one.”
A fascinating 2018 piece in the Atlantic, by Megan Garber, documents all of these indiscretions and more. She writes:
Some of Bloomberg’s misogynistic acts and comments allegedly carry over into the workplace, meaning that his indiscretions do possibly cross over into the #MeToo realm of sexual harassment. For instance, several women have sued Bloomberg’s company for discrimination or sexual harassment, and the Atlantic piece documents their allegations. One female employee says that when she told Bloomberg she was pregnant, he responded with, “Kill it!” When she said she was engaged, Bloomberg responded, “What is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?”
It’s worth noting that Bloomberg denies some of these claims. To some extent, he deserves the benefit of the doubt, certainly on any alleged acts that are possibly illegal. Yet a pattern of these incidents over time cannot be ignored or easily explained away, and the mayor must reconcile with the accusations of sexism against him if he intends to ask the public for their trust.
In her Atlantic piece, Garber asks “Will the Americans (and specifically now, apparently, the Democrats) of the current moment consider allegations involving casual misogyny, on the personal level and at the institutional, to be politically disqualifying?” It remains to be seen whether they will. But for Democrats to overlook Bloomberg’s long history of sexism and misogyny would be a stunning act of hypocrisy. I don’t know if anyone could take their otherwise often valid criticisms of President Trump’s misogyny seriously ever again.
