The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Zombie Candidate Elizabeth Warren Attacks Billionaire Bloomberg

Posted on | February 15, 2020 | Comments Off on Zombie Candidate Elizabeth Warren Attacks Billionaire Bloomberg

 

Let’s hope she inflicts maximum damage:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) hit fellow Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg on Thursday, taking aim specifically at his recently resurfaced comments he made in 2008 about the controversial practice known as redlining.
“Now this has been some presidential primary already. We’ve been going about this for about a year,” Warren said during a packed town hall in the Washington, D.C., suburb.
“Some people got in a little later than others. Michael Bloomberg got in on the billionaire plan,” she said to widespread boos from the audience.
She then went on to address 2008 comments resurfaced by The Associated Press, in which Bloomberg said that the end of redlining contributed to the financial crisis.
The practice involves banks discriminating against racial minorities looking to take out loans in an effort to afford homes. Those specific communities were identified by redlines on maps.
“Michael Bloomberg is saying, in effect, that the 2008 financial crash was caused because the banks weren’t permitted to discriminate against black and brown people,” Warren said.
“I want to be clear,” she continued. “That crisis would not have been averted if the banks had been able to be bigger racists, and anyone who thinks that should not be the leader of our party.”

Of course, what Bloomberg said about “redlining” and the financial crisis, like his defense of “stop and frisk,” was just the facts. Banks were under pressure to demonstrate that they were not discriminating against minorities, and this resulted in a lowering of lending standards. Bloomberg was not advocating racial discrimination, he was merely explaining how the history of discrimination and the efforts of finanical institutions to compensate for past wrongs were a crucial factor in what went wrong during the housing “bubble.” But facts don’t matter in a Democratic primary campaign. What does matter is (a) Warren’s campaign is doomed, and (b) on her way to oblivion, she’s taking a shot at the guy who many Democrats see as their best hope to beat Trump:

Establishment Democrats who had hoped that Michael Bloomberg could ride to their rescue might need to start looking for another plan. The former New York mayor got kneecapped this week when recordings surfaced of his previous remarks about race, crime, and economics that make Bloomberg look guilty of the kind of “hate” that Democrats routinely accuse Republicans of perpetrating. Desperate to stop socialist Bernie Sanders from winning the party’s presidential nomination, Democrats are now reckoning with the consequences of their habitual rhetoric of racial blame.
Having endorsed the anti-police agenda of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, Democrats won’t find it easy to defend Bloomberg’s record as mayor. Even if the billionaire’s lavish spending could buy him the party’s nomination — an untested proposition — Bloomberg’s record on racial issues would make it difficult for him to play the race card against President Trump in the general election campaign. Does anyone really think Democrats can win without the race card? . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.




 

Category: Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, Racism

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