“There has been plenty of conjecture over whether a Trump-like figure could take over the Democratic Party. And I would say with Bloomberg that we’re about to find out. The cries of “Bloomberg is not Trump!” will rain down on me now, and, of course, he’s not. But there are a disturbing number of similarities. We have a figure without connections or the same value system as the party he seeks to represent, with racial and sexist skeletons in his closet, and a penchant for subverting democracy and showing contempt toward the rule of law. Democrats who are acting as pundits and thinking that Bloomberg offers the most certain close to the Trump era are playing with a stick of dynamite.

There is a persistent pattern in Bloomberg’s political life: buying off anyone who can be bought for their support or their silence. Bloomberg paid off pastors helpful to his mayoral candidacies, paid off members of Congress who are now backing him with millions in donations, and paid off mayors who have endorsed him with $350 million in city grant programs that filled budget holes. He has doubled the rate for campaign organizers and guaranteed them job security until November, catering their meals and giving them free swag. One by one, he’s buying off the political class; Nathan Robinson quips, “I sometimes feel like being in the Ionesco play Rhinoceros, in which people unexpectedly become rhinoceroses overnight.”

-->