Another Day, Another Racially-Questionable Comment From Bloomberg

It’s clear that all the money in the world can’t stop troublesome past remarks from coming to light, because if anyone could keep a lid on their inconvenient history, it would be billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Despite all the money he’s throwing at the 2020 campaign, however, it hasn’t been enough to keep his own mouth from sinking his prospects.

In a two-week period, Bloomberg has been hit for a number of his past statements, including one racially-insensitive (some are even saying racist) remark where he concluded that the only way to keep guns off the streets was to throw minority kids up against a wall and pat them down.

Now, in a week where he’s also being hammered for denigrating the intelligence of farmers and factory workers, an interview from 2011 has surfaced wherein Bloomberg talks about how unfit “black and Latino males” are for the modern workplace.

“Well, for a long time, people have said there’s nothing you can do about it, but blacks and Latinos score terribly in school testing compared to whites and Asians. If you look at our jails, it’s predominantly minorities,” Bloomberg told PBS at the time.

“If you look at where crime takes place, it’s in minority neighborhoods. If you look at who the victims and the perpetrators are, it’s virtually all minorities. This is something that has gone on for a long time. I assume it’s prevalent elsewhere but it’s certainly true in New York City. And for many, many years, people said there’s just nothing you can do about it,” he continued.

Bloomberg said that, during his time as mayor of New York, the police force had done an excellent job of diversifying its ranks.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “there’s this enormous cohort of black and Latino males, age, let’s say, 16 to 25, that don’t have jobs, don’t have any prospects, don’t know how to find jobs, don’t know what their skill sets are, don’t know how to behave in the workplace where they have to work collaboratively and collectively.”

We don’t necessarily question Bloomberg’s assessment of the problem, but this just…this just isn’t a way you can talk about race in 2020 and win the Democratic Party nomination.

Even if Bloomberg does spend his way to the nomination, it’s already clear that there will be an enormous contingent of “Sanders or Bust” voters who will not support him. Without them, there simply aren’t enough moderate, let’s-get-back-to-normal Democrat voters out there to make a Bloomberg presidency happen.

Some pundits say that Trump fears Bloomberg more than any other candidate, simply because of how much money he’ll bring to the race. Where we’re standing, though, it seems like a Bloomberg nomination would all but guarantee Trump another four years in the White House.