The EconomistNovember 30th 2019 United States 272
1the mayorship of New York City as a Repub-
lican in 2001. Mr Bloomberg’s tenure is per-
haps best remembered for his support of a
policy known as “stop-and-frisk”, in which
New York police liberally stopped residents
to search for weapons and contraband.
This was ruled unconstitutional by a feder-
al court because, as practised, it was a form
of racial profiling. But his mayorship was
otherwise a success. Since leaving office he
has launched campaigns on gun control
and climate change.
Getting to the White House is another
matter, though. Mr Bloomberg used to joke
that a short, divorced Jewish billionaire
could not win the presidency. But winning
a general election against Mr Trump looks
relatively straightforward compared with
the challenge of getting through a Demo-
cratic primary. According to The Econo-
mist’s analysis of data from YouGov, which
does our polling, he is the second-most-
unpopular candidate for president (only
Marianne Williamson, a spiritual guru
moonlighting as a Democratic candidate,
polls worse). Over the past two months,
47% of registered voters told YouGov they
had a “very” or “somewhat” unfavourable
view of the mayor, compared with 25% who
rated him positively. The gap of 22 percent-
age points represents the largest deficit of
any Democratic candidate.
Mr Bloomberg ranks lower than Mr
Trump, whom voters rate as more unfa-
vourable than favourable by 11 percentage
points. In fact, of 32 politicians YouGov has
asked about since September, voters rated
only Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority
leader, and Ms Williamson lower than Mr
Bloomberg. This alone, however, does not
rule out a Bloomberg victory in the Demo-
crats’ nominating contest. After all, Mr
Trump won the presidency despite having
an approval rating a year before the 2016
election of minus 18 points.
It will be tough for Mr Bloomberg to re-
peat Mr Trump’s success, though. While he
was a candidate the president took unor-
thodox positions on foreign policy and so-
cial spending—bucking Republican hawk-
ishness and promising not to roll back
Medicaid or Social Security. This allowed
him to court Democrats who held unrecon-
structed racial attitudes but who favoured a
large social safety net. Mr Bloomberg occu-
pies a much lonelier place on the political
spectrum. He aligns with the Democratic
Party on questions like gay marriage and
gun control. But he is opposed to populist
economic proposals, such as Ms Warren’s
wealth tax (which is favoured by 66% of
Democrats, according to YouGov) and the
trillion-dollar Green New Deal (which only
4% of Democrats oppose). A 2017 study
published by the Voter Study Group, a col-
lective of researchers and political scien-
tists, found that only 4% of all voters were
similarly liberal on social issues but con-servative on economics.
There is a caveat to all this. Democratic
primary voters say that the thing they most
want is a candidate who can beat Mr
Trump. If Mr Bloomberg can convince
them that he can do that, his chances will
shift. Even if that were to happen, though,
he would still face several hurdles. He has
decided to fund his own campaign, but by
refusing to take contributions it is unclear
how he could take part in the televised de-
bates (the Democratic National Committee
will allow only candidates who have re-
ceived donations from 200,000 voters inthe December debate). Such thresholds are
likely to get more testing, as they have
throughout the primary build-up so far.
Mr Bloomberg also plans to skip cam-
paigning the first four primary states—he
will not even appear on the ballot in New
Hampshire—and to focus instead on dele-
gate-rich contests on Super Tuesday in ear-
ly March. In the past 40 years only Bill Clin-
ton has gone on to win the presidency after
losing both Iowa and New Hampshire. But
then again, no candidate has ever started
their campaign with a more than $30m ad-
vertising blitz, either. 7I
n december2017 the Democratic Repub-
lic of Congo was in ferment. Joseph Ka-
bila, then the president, seemed to be
weighing whether or not to stand in an
election, even though he should have left
office a year before, having served two full
terms, his limit under the country’s consti-
tution. In Kinshasa, the capital, Mr Kabila’s
allies remarked casually that perhaps the
president would stand again. It was at that
moment that the American government
imposed sanctions on Dan Gertler, an Is-
raeli mining billionaire who is a close
friend of Mr Kabila. Steven Mnuchin, the
treasury secretary, announced that at the
“direction of President Trump”, he was
placing sanctions on Mr Gertler, together
with 12 other “serious human-rights abus-
ers and corrupt actors.” Mr Trump, he said,
was “declaring a national emergency withrespect to serious human-rights abuse and
corruption around the world.”
The imposition of sanctions on Mr Ger-
tler came as a shock to many companies
operating in Congo. According to Tom Per-
riello, formerly Barack Obama’s envoy to
the Great Lakes region of Africa, it probably
helped push Mr Kabila to his eventual deci-
sion to stand down in the elections that
took place a year later, last December. Yet
under the Obama administration, the Trea-
sury had considered sanctions on Mr Ger-
tler and backed off. Under Mr Trump, it did
not hesitate. Indeed, his administration
has been more enthusiastic than any other
in history about using financial sanctions.
Partly that is because the president is in-
tent on bashing places like Iran and Vene-
zuela. But that is not a complete explana-
tion: sanctions have expanded everywhere.WASHINGTON, DC
Donald Trump’s administration has shown a surprising enthusiasm for putting
sanctions on the corrupt and on human-rights abusersSanctions