“Advisers said he ultimately decided not to run after concluding he could accomplish more through his political activism and philanthropic work over the next two years, and by focusing on such issues as gun violence, opioid addiction and climate change.
“’I’ve come to realize that I’m less interested in talking than doing,’ he wrote. ‘And I have concluded that, for now, the best way for me to help the country is by rolling up my sleeves and continuing to get work done.’”
And with that, as the Washington Post reports, Michael Bloomberg has announced that he won’t be running for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2020. He’s apparently having far too good a time funding campaigns to restrict Second Amendment rights to waste time tussling with the John Hickenloopers, Jay Inslees and Andrew Yangs of the world.
What does that mean for never-ending fight to defend and extend the right to keep and bear arms? It means Daddy Bloombucks isn’t going anywhere.
“I believe I would defeat Donald Trump in a general election,” Bloomberg, 77, said in a statement posted online Tuesday afternoon. “But I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field.”
Instead, he’ll continue to write checks to support disarmament campaigns around the country like the magazine capacity limit in Colorado or I-1639 in Washington. It’s practically pocket change for him and he doesn’t have to hold press conferences or stand on a stage with a bunch of nobodies trying to stand out in a “debate.”
So he’s out. Well, probably…
“You should expect to hear a lot more from Mike Bloomberg,” said Kevin Sheekey, Bloomberg’s longtime political adviser. “Some people don’t run, and you don’t hear from them again. I think the reverse is true here.”
Shortly after Bloomberg made the decision Monday, his aides decided to go through with a previously scheduled meeting with outside vendors to decide on a campaign logo. The team had built a campaign website and planned a launch that would begin in his hometown of Medford, Mass.
“What we basically told him was we were going to build a car, and we were going to give him the keys,” said Howard Wolfson, a Bloomberg political strategist who helped draft the plans. “If he wanted to turn the car on, the car was going to work, and it was going to go fast and it was going to look good.”