Remember Mike Bloomberg's Memetastic 2020 Presidential Run? That Shit was Sad and Embarrassing. At Least It Got Him Elected!

On February 4th, something ended that never should have begun: Mike Bloomberg’s ill-fated, tragicomic, often hilarious run for the Democratic 2020 presidential nomination. Billions were at the core of Bloomberg’s persona and his ostensible appeal; clearly, someone who made BILLIONS of dollars in business would do an AMAZING job as president, right? 

So there’s something strangely perfect in Bloomberg spending, by most estimates, half a BILLION dollars self-funding a campaign that went nowhere, accomplished nothing and made the lilliputian businessman the laughingstock of the political world. 

It’s tempting to say Bloomberg got nothing for his roughly five hundred million dollar investment but that would not be fair or accurate. For five hundred million dollars, Bloomberg got laughed at. For five hundred million dollars he got ridiculed. For five hundred million dollars he was hated. For five hundred million dollars his sins and transgressions and fatal flaws as a human being and candidate for political office spilled into public view, casting him in a light at once harsh and unflattering and relentlessly comic. 

For half a billion dollars, Bloomberg unconsciously paid to have the biggest “kick me” sign in the history of American electoral politics erected just above his posterior. 

Bloomberg’s campaign intuited that the internet was the key to Trump’s shocking 2016 victory and that with enough ad buys on social media Bloomberg could purchase his way into being on equal footing with Trump as well as Democratic front-runners Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. 

So Bloomberg did what serious-minded souls out to change the world have always done: he recruited the services of higher-ups in meme factory Fuck Jerry, the plagiarism-happy hipster jackasses who helped make the Fyre Festival a thing. 

Bloomberg’s campaign pursued a similar strategy as the Fyre Festival. It threw money at popular Instagram accounts and “influencers” to create a huge amount of hype in a short amount of time. Bloomberg’s campaign did about as well as Fyre Festival, though, to be fair Bloomberg DID win Western Samoa, and with it four delegates, so his message of “I’m rich, and not quite as terrible as Trump, so make ME President, you broke losers!” did resonate somewhere. That somewhere, curiously enough, is Western Samoa. 

Bloomberg was willing to look silly if it meant becoming the most powerful person in the world. A New York Times article on Bloomberg’s Dresden bombing-like social media campaign described Even Reeves, a “creative director for Jerry Media” being brought in to “build a self-aware ironic character around Mr. Bloomberg.

Needless to say, this self-aware, ironic character did not have anything to do with the actual Bloomberg. If the real Bloomberg was self-aware or skilled in irony he never would have run for the nomination in the first place. The idea of these shotgun marriages of convenience was to lead with self-awareness and shamelessness, to make a joke both out of Bloomberg’s wild, indiscriminate spending and old white guy obliviousness, to depict Bloomberg as a guy who was so UN-hip and so out of it yet so open about it that he became ironically hip. 

To cite a typical example, the account grapejuiceboys posted an image of a fake conversation between Bloomberg and their account where the former mayor inquires, “Hello Juice Boys. Can you post an original meme to make me look cool for the upcoming Democratic primary?” When they respond with a “I don’t think so tbh your vibe is kinda off” “Bloomberg” counters with “I put Lamborghini doors on the Escalade” in a post demarcated as sponsored content from the Mike Bloomberg campaign. 

“Your vibe is kinda off” is a euphemistic way of saying that Bloomberg’s racist, discriminatory policies as the Mayor of New York, most notoriously Stop and Frisk, helped destroy the lives of countless POC and black families, and also Bloomberg being a power-mad oligarch out to preserve a rancid and evil status quo for his own selfish personal, professional and financial benefit.

Then there’s the Bloomberg campaign collaboration with a gentleman by the name of ShitheadSteve, who attracted the attention of the billionaire’s people by virtue of his 5.3 million followers, as I cannot otherwise imagine Bloomberg even knowing what Instagram is, let alone being a fan of a gentleman with “Shithead” in his professional moniker. 

Shitheadsteve’s sponsored Bloomberg post begins more or less like all the others, with “Bloomberg” messaging, “Hello Shithead, Can you make a meme that lets the younger generation know I’m the cool candidate?” to which Shitheadsteve responds, “That sounds really hard” to which the “self-aware ironic character” slick admen created responded, “Great. Please fax it over before markets close!”

In the comments section for the post Shitheadsteve invokes the famous gif of Steve Buscemi pretending to be a high schooler from 30 Rock, referencing his catch-phrase “How do you do, fellow kids?) followed by (and yes, this is really #sponsored by @bloomberg).

By loudly broadcasting Bloomberg’s desperate desire to look cool and appeal to the kind of internet and meme-savvy young people who were presumably a major factor in Trump’s victory the campaign was angrily insisting that Bloomberg was not only in on the joke about him being an out of touch old codger; he was the source of the joke as well, at least from a monetary perspective. He was the subject of the joke, the target of the joke, fuzzy as it might be, and the investor behind the joke as well. 

If you do not think that jokes should have investors, well, you’re not Mike Bloomberg or the meme maniacs behind Fuck Jerry or Meme 2020. Also, you are correct. The whole point of memes is that they go viral in an organic way, that they reflect the funky, fickle, hard to anticipate will of the internet. The shitty, shitty, endlessly cruel and juvenile internet. 

It’s surprising and unfortunate that joining forces with Fuck Jerry and Shitheadsteve did not lead to Bloomberg being taken seriously as a candidate with an important, relevant message for the American people. 

“Mike Will Get It Done” nervously insisted Bloomberg’s slogan and commercials in a way that couldn’t help but call to mind the catch-phrase of a slightly more cornpone figure: Larry the Cable Guy of “Git-R-Done!” fame. 

Bloomberg’s ads did a terrible job of promoting him, his ideas and his candidacy. But they did a wonderful job of selling a grateful nation on the usefulness and necessity of the “Skip Ad” button.”

The crazed narcissist’s advertisements touted his leadership of New York. In a bid to out-New York Donald Trump, Bloomberg relentlessly played up his accomplishments as the problem-solving mayor of New York city. THE New York City.

You know, the famous one.  

What Bloomberg did not seem to realize is that Americans and non-Americans have a violently bifurcated conception of New York and New Yorkers. On one hand, they hold New York in high esteem because it is an important city and an international city, a vibrant and alive hub of finance and culture that’s also home to Broadway and the publishing industry and so much more. They similarly revere New Yorkers for being tough and gutsy enough to make it in a city that has been endlessly mythologized and romanticized as the center of the known universe and the only city that matters. 

This idealized conception of New York co-exists with a widespread conception of New Yorkers as a bunch of self-important assholes who think they’re so fucking special because they live in New York and the Big Apple is so goddamn magical. So while Americans do, in fact, often hold New Yorkers in high esteem they’re also prone to thinking they’re a bunch of pretentious, arrogant douchebags who can all go fuck themselves. 

Bloomberg seemed to have banked on getting the first kind of response, that the ignorant rabble would ooh and awe with delight that a fancy rich man from New York city thought enough of our country to want to purchase its presidency. Instead he received the second reaction. We, as a culture, told Bloomberg to take the entire Empire State and shove it up his ass.

Shortly before he dropped out, the merchandising arm of Bloomberg’s campaign made a hat available for pre-order with the words “Not a Socialist” on the front and “Bring in the Boss” on the back. 

Tragically, if you clink on that link now it goes to a dead page, so I will never achieve my goal of pairing a Mike Bloomberg “Not a Socialist/Bring in the Boss” black hat with a “Jeb!” Hoodie as the ultimate in ironic, famously doomed campaign garb. 

The problem with this hat is that it already exists, and is extremely popular, only usually it’s red and has the words “Make America Great Again” on it and is worn by Republicans and supporters of the president. 

The other problem is that this headwear feels violently out of sync with the tenor of our increasingly radical, revolutionary times. We are sharpening the guillotines and plotting revolution, political and otherwise, but Bloomberg thinks the problem is not that our country is being run and ruined by a narcissist, deeply problematic New York billionaire with an appalling history when it comes to race and sex, but rather that the country is being run by the wrong narcissistic, deeply problematic New York billionaire with an appalling history when it comes to race and sex. 

Bloomberg seems to think that we did not vote for Trump despite his personality, persona and background but rather because of them. Sadly, he could very well be right. The people might want an asshole, and a boss, but they have nevertheless found Bloomberg’s pitch unbelievably easy to resist.

How morally bankrupt was Bloomberg’s blind ambition? As part of their meme blitz the Bloomberg campaign sought out the participation of widely reviled hack and notorious joke thief Fat Jew, AKA Josh Ostrovsky. 

But, and this is a very curious thing I am about to write, Fat Jew had too much integrity as an artist and a New Yorker to sell out to a man delusionally convinced that he had a pathway to the nomination and presidency that involved paying off the Shitheadsteves and Fat Jews of the world to give him access to the hearts and minds of the young people of today. 

For the first, and I would imagine also the final time, people found themselves respecting a public stand made by Fat Jew. Mike Bloomberg did the impossible: he made the Fat Jew look good. He made him look better than good: he made him look like a paragon of integrity despite being anything but. 

Bloomberg couldn’t even secure the quasi-endorsement of Fat Jew in exchange for what I imagine is a fuck-ton of money. How on earth was he going to connect with people he did not personally pay off to further his political delusions?

So goodbye, Mike Bloomberg, and thanks for all the memes! 

Oh, and in case you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic. 

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