Mike Bloomberg thinks he can become the Democratic nominee for president with an unconventional approach: Skip early voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, focus on vote-rich states like California, and bombard voters with an endless stream of ads touting his accomplishments.
That won’t be enough. Even if the billionaire former mayor of New York has an unlimited amount of money for ads, he still needs to connect with voters and convince them he’s better than Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren or more than a dozen other Democrats. On this, Bloomberg could actually learn from his nemesis Donald Trump, the most unconventional president in memory and a master of self-promotion.
Trump won the White House in 2016 because he went above, below and around the mainstream media to talk to voters on his own terms, at bumptious rallies and in his vitriolic Twitter feed. Trump’s bellicose bombast has never made him popular, but it earned him a concrete bloc of core supporters. As any marketing expert will tell you, a small but impassioned user base can be better than bland mass acceptance. It’s the difference between foot soldiers who will fight for you and fair-weather followers who might forget your name if challenged.
Trump’s dark genius for self-promotion includes clever sloganeering (“Make America Great Again”), along with an arch sense of branding. His famous put-downs of opponents such as “Pocahontas” and “Little Rocket Man” are a form of negative branding that works surprisingly well. It’s crass but also entertaining, and if you don’t think it’s funny, the joke’s on you. Yes, Trump appeals to Americans’ worst instincts, but he also voices their disgust with elites. The surest sign of Trump’s success at this is he’s one of those elites himself, yet supporters feel he’s in the trenches with them.
Can he make a personal connection?
Could Bloomberg ever establish his own Trumpian mind-meld with voters, unfiltered by establishment tastemakers? It’s hard to see how. Bloomberg is a technocrat who hopes to win on his resume. His personal Twitter feed is an earnest recitation of his many accomplishments—helping get gun-safety laws passed, presiding over New York City after 9-11, founding a company that now employs 20,000—but there’s no sense of fun. Would you like to have a beer with him? Uh, sure, if you want to hear the litany of things wrong with Trump that you’re already familiar with.
As a socially liberal, business-friendly centrist, Bloomberg could be a good match for Trump in a general election. He’s a composite Democrat, supporting higher taxes on wealthy people like himself, fast action on climate change, a new public health option that leaves private insurance in place and gentler immigration policies. Popular businesspeople like Mark Cuban like him. Bloomberg’s record in business and government proves his leadership skills. And he’s nearly 20 times as rich as Trump.
The Democratic Party, however, is not likely to give him a megaphone. Since Bloomberg is self-funding his campaign, he can’t qualify for debates under rules that require a certain level of small-dollar donations. It’s not clear he has the fortitude for the retail politics of stumping in flyover country. Millions of dollars of ads can help raise his poll numbers from the low-single digits. But ads don’t substitute for a personal connection and voters hit a saturation point with ads anyway, tuning it all out.
Trump was not the best-funded candidate in 2016. Jeb! Bush was. Trump didn’t beat Bush and more than a dozen others by outspending them. Trump won with unique juju that convinced voters he understood them better than any of the others. Bloomberg will need some of that. So will whoever ends up running against Trump next fall.
Rick Newman is the author of four books, including “Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success.” Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman. Confidential tip line: [email protected]. Encrypted communication available. Click here to get Rick’s stories by email.
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