Michael Bloomberg has infiltrated the Democratic presidential race in an attention-seeking and egotistical power trip. His campaign will undoubtedly have negative connotations for the far more politically experienced candidates opposing him. He is over 2,000 times more wealthy than the top four polling candidates in the race, and he is attempting to buy the presidency with his ridiculous spending. 

Mr. Bloomberg is pursuing an extremely unconventional approach to the Democratic primary, skipping the early states like Iowa and New Hampshire and focusing on the more populated states like California and New York. With his estimated $56 billion, he can buy more television ads than all of the other candidates combined and attempt to convince voters that he is the candidate who should be president. 

Mr. Bloomberg’s spending on advertising averages a whopping $55 million per two weeks. By comparison, the average spending of the current Democratic frontrunner, Joe Biden, is $1.2 million in the same amount of time.

It is infuriating when financially fortunate people like Bloomberg spend enormous amounts of money on themselves rather than putting it to good use and helping less fortunate people. Most Democrats agree that the goal of the 2020 election is to beat President Trump. If this was Bloomberg’s goal, he would contribute his exorbitant amounts of money to the candidate he thought was best suited to actually win.  

The pure capital of Bloomberg is frankly quite unfair for the other candidates, as money is one of the most important factors in elections. If a candidate is able to throw away millions of dollars and have their financial resources relatively unaffected, they are unreasonably wealthy. Money was the reason Kamala Harris and Cory Booker dropped out of the race.

Having endless capital also helps one get attention from the news media. According to the New York Times, Michael Bloomberg has the third-most news coverage of all the Democratic candidates. This excessive news coverage comes despite the fact that Mr. Bloomberg does not even poll close to the top four candidates nationally. If the news were to cover lesser-known candidates like Amy Klobuchar (seventh most coverage) and Andrew Yang (eighth most coverage), they would be able to gain momentum and spark interest in voters who had not previously thought about supporting them.

Perhaps the most antagonizing thing about Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign is the fact that he doesn’t accept donations. At first glance, a voter may believe that by not accepting donations, Mr. Bloomberg is saving the money of the American people. This thought is blatantly wrong because the amount Bloomberg is spending on his campaign is more than could ever be raised. 

If he stays in the Democratic Primary until the National Convention, Mr. Bloomberg will spend $880 million on just television ads for his campaign by the end of the Democratic primary. One can donate to the organization Grow Clean Air and each dollar donated will result in the planting of one tree (other organizations have these same conditions). If Mr. Bloomberg donated just one percent of the money he will spend on his campaign, 8.8 million trees would be planted as the result of his donation.

Michael Bloomberg is spending his money on his useless presidential joyride instead of using it to beat President Trump, and he is skillfully manipulating Americans into supporting him.