FWIW, WGN Chicago (the local OTA channel) and WGN America (the cable channel) have had completely different programming feeds since late 2014. Since then, as I understand it, WGN America has no longer carried any programming from the Chicago station.
Hillary had money, but a poor strategy and was fighting against Russian influence. Bloomberg’s been in for about six weeks, and is already polling higher than 70% of the remaining Democratic field. And he hasn’t been on one debate stage, nor is he trying to. And I don’t think he’s really even done much campaigning outside of ads. That’s pretty impressive.
Will it work out for him? I have no idea.
Is he flawed? Absolutely, but this campaign is exposing each and every one of these candidates as flawed, some more seriously than others.
Would he be my favorite president? Hell no, but he might be my favorite presidential candidate, if he’s in the best position to beat Trump and take some of the power away from the Republicans.
Do I like the idea of a billionaire buying the presidency? Not at all, but even if his ideology isn’t very much lined up with mine, sometimes it’s nice to have rich and powerful people on our side and not always face the well-funded and skullduggerous opposition with one hand tied behind our back.
And as we enter the phase of the campaign where head-to-head polls start to matter a little more, that poll that came out today showing Bloomberg doing stronger against Trump in Michigan than any other candidate besides Biden makes my ears perk up a little.
Bloomberg did largely fund the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal project. That’ll get him a lot of plusses among those who think the Climate Crisis is one of the biggest issues.
Yeah but again, for all the money he is spending (more than all the other candidates combined possibly) he is still only polling at 5%. I doubt that number grows much.
And his run is more of a vanity project and an effort to block the wealth tax. He could easily spend 400 million on improving voter outreach efforts, or funding races, or some charity rather than getting 5% of the vote due to name recognition.
As far as funding, groups like ActBlue which collect small donations are raising more money than the Koch brothers spent in previous races (Koch brothers spent 900 million in 2016, while ActBlue is raising a billion dollars a year the last couple years). So small donors are showing themselves to be a major force in politics.