The Democratic Primary Is A Mess. Michael Bloomberg Is Taking Advantage. [View all]

[left-of-center2012]

While the rest of the Democratic field showed up in New Hampshire still unclear about who, exactly, won the Iowa caucuses, Mike Bloomberg was elsewhere. He was in Philadelphia; he was in Providence, Rhode Island; he was in Norfolk, Virginia. This weekend, he’s going to Alabama and Oklahoma.

In light of the morass other Democrats have found themselves in after the app-induced Iowa debacle, in which days passed before it became clear that Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg essentially tied, the primary race is fluid. Iowa didn’t winnow the field as it usually does, and the negative attacks between candidates have started to pick up. But the former mayor of New York City, who only entered the race in November, is simply staying out of the fray — and there are signs his campaign is appealing to voters who are looking for an alternative to a struggling Joe Biden.

“I didn’t make a decision to stay out (of Ithe first four states), I came in too late to get in, so I can’t take credit for that,” Bloomberg told me on Wednesday when I asked him whether the Iowa mess made him feel vindicated about his decision to largely skip the four early states. “There’s plenty of chances, there’s lots of elections coming up in every other state. There’s still 46 states to hear from, and that’s where I’m gonna compete.”

“After more than a year of this, the field is as unsettled as ever,” Bloomberg spokesperson Galia Slayen said in a statement this week. “No one has made the sale or even come close to it.”

There’s no other campaign quite like Bloomberg’s. First, there’s its sheer size; the campaign announced this week it plans to soon swell to 2,000 staffers. Then, there’s its unusual strategy: Instead of flooding states that vote early in the primary calendar in the hope of capturing momentum, Bloomberg is targeting states that vote later, many of which offer many more delegates up for grabs than Iowa or New Hampshire do. And he’s running as though in some ways he’s already the nominee, hardly mentioning his primary opponents and casting himself as the “un-Trump.”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/michael-bloomberg-2020-democratic-primary-biden