C2 eZ su the washington post.friday, february 21 , 2020
importance of being able to
name the president of mexico
when given a foreign policy pop
quiz. They argued without scowl-
ing.
Bloomberg was not polite. He
gripped the lectern. He gave
sidelong glances. In addition to
full-throated contempt,
Bloomberg was armed with con-
descension. He summed up a
conversation about Sanders’s
economic policies as “ridicu-
lous.”
“We’re not going to throw out
capitalism,” he said.
Then Bloomberg mocked
Sanders, a self-declared demo-
cratic socialist, for being a mil-
lionaire and having three homes.
Sanders turned toward
Bloomberg like a snake ready to
strike. He ticked off his places in
Washington and Vermont. Then
he defended his right to a cabin
in the country.
Bloomberg just turned away.
And went back to looking bored.
[email protected]American men. He didn’t bring
warmth. or really even a smile.
or a pleasant expression. He
didn’t ooze charisma. The bil-
lionaire simply showed up.
The other D emocrats demand-
ed to see his tax returns.
Bloomberg told them they need-
ed to be patient. “I can’t go to
TurboTax,” he said dryly. Why
not? Because he is a billionaire
and the tax returns o f billionaires
are r eally, r eally long and compli-
cated. So hold your horses.
Bloomberg and former vice
president Joe Biden sparred over
how closely the former mayor
was aligned with President Ba-
rack obama. Biden glared into
the camera as he took Bloomberg
to task for not supporting the
Affordable Care Act. Bloomberg
rebutted with barely more than a
shrug.
Way over at stage left, former
South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete
Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobu-
char (minn.) were having their
own one-on-one battle over thefaced lesbians.’ And no, I’m not
talking about Donald Trump. I’m
talking about mayor Bloomberg.”
Bloomberg, who was standing
to her right, didn’t flinch. She
demanded that he release wom-
en with whom he’d settled sexual
harassment cases from their
nondisclosure agreements. He
said no. Sure, he muttered some
vague explanation of his think-
ing. But mostly, he just said no
and left it at that. He faced
questions about his advocacy of
the stop-and-frisk policing poli-
cy. He repeated his explanation
and his regret with about as
much emotion as one might ex-
hibit ordering a morning latte.
“I’ve apologized,” Bloomberg
said. “I’ve asked for forgiveness.”
And that’s that.
It may be that Bloomberg’s
apology was sincere. But he did
not come bearing an excess of
empathy. He did not come with
heart-wrenching stories of what
he has learned about the effects
of his policy on young AfricanSanders’s face flushed red as he
reached new heights of apoplec-
tic fury over the amount of mon-
ey that Bloomberg has pumped
into his campaign: more than
$400 million. Sanders (I-Vt.)
punched the air for emphasis.
His voice roared and his eyes
grew wide. He leaned forward
into the microphone. Do you
even need a microphone when
your voice has reached the deci-
bels of a howitzer?
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (mass.)
turned up wearing her familiar
uniform: black trousers, black
top, colorful blazer — this one
purple — with the cuffs turned
up. As always, she was loose-
limbed, sharp-elbowed and light
on her feet. She opened with a
double jab at Bloomberg, refer-
encing allegations of demeaning
and insulting language aimed at
women.
“I’d like to talk about who
we’re running against,” Warren
said. “A billionaire who calls
women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-A standard-issue politician’s
flag pin was tacked to his lapel —
the chief distinguishing feature
between Wall Street formality
and Washingon drone-dom. His
face was without affect. As the
moderators l obbed the first ques-
tions, his resting expression was
one of boredom. As the night
progressed, his face exuded dis-
dain, then eye-rolling disdain,
then disdain with a smidgen of
disgust. Bloomberg the billion-
aire did not come to explain
himself or to play nicely with the
other candidates. He came to
bask in his humanitarian cer-
tainty. He has come to save the
day.
Stop your complaining.
Are billionaires inherently
bad? That was a point of conten-
tion during the debate that was
not settled, but the evening cer-
tainly proved that billionaire
Bloomberg was the catalyst for a
political bar brawl. Sen. Bernie
NOTeBOOK from C1
B loomberg practices his poker face in Vegas
LeFT: Former New York mayor
Mike Bloomberg got an earful
from sen. elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.) at Wednesday’s
presidential debate. RIGHT:
Journalists watch the Las Vegas
debate, where Bloomberg
alternated between exasperated
and just plain bored.Bloomberg said at one point,
explaining that he hadn’t
released his taxes because they
were complex and would take
several weeks to prepare.
Klobuchar responded by
chiding Bloomberg for his lack
of transparency. Buttigieg took
the statement as a sign of
Bloomberg’s elitism, mentioning
how he and the other candidates
had put in serious “backyards
and diners” time with voters.
Warren shrugged. “Pay
overtime,” s he told the
billionaire, in a burn that was
both fed-up and practical. “Get it
done.”
[email protected]debate. She was the one who
leaned into fraught symbolism
in the right way. She was the
pestering woman? fine. Then
this debate was going to be
about the pestering woman
relentlessly dismantling the
billionaire who thought he could
buy everything from female
employees’ silence to the
presidential election.
She was the one who lobbed
the fireworks all night long and,
perhaps more meaningfully, the
sparklers that encapsulated both
her irritation, and her refusal to
let her irritation get the better of
her.
“I can’t go to TurboTax,”ascent, and everything it negated
about her own hard-working,
box-checking uphill trudge.
on Wednesday, Klobuchar
was the unleashed id of
frustrated women everywhere; it
was astonishing to see it play out
in public instead of via inner
monologue, or over wine at
book-club night.
But Warren was the
aspirational one. She behaved as
though she’d looked at the polls,
realized she had nothing to lose,
realized she was always going to
be criticized for being too bossy
or too unelectable, and decided,
you know what — chuck it, I’ll
just debate how I want towere times during Warren’s
relentless Bloomberg attacks
when it felt as if we were
watching a mouse stuck in a
trap: You definitely didn’t want
it roaming the house willy-nilly,
but that didn’t make the
squirming any less excruciating.
But all of those exchanges felt
as if they came from a more
honest place than Klobuchar’s
earlier assertion that electing a
woman would, presto, eradicate
sexism. of course electing a
woman wouldn’t eradicate
sexism; it is too baked into the
system. She was there on the
stage, incandescently angry over
Buttigieg’s express-elevator“I am the one — not you, that
has won statewide, in
congressional district after
congressional district,”
Kobuchar fired at Buttigieg after
he chastised her for being
unable to remember the name of
mexico’s president at an earlier
event. “When you tried, in
Indiana, to run, what happened
to you? You lost by over 20
points.”
When Buttigieg pressed on in
his trademark calmer-than-thou
style, she snarked back. “I wish
everyone was as perfect as you.”
I can’t say that moment was
presidential; it was actually
fairly cringe-inducing. And there— was baffling. Weren’t the male
candidates, some of whom have
fewer delegates than Warren,
also tested earlier? Were they
employing the Smurfette rule,
by which only one female can be
present at a time?
In the previous eight debates,
the gender of the female
candidates had been addressed
mostly via glib sound bites: of
course women can win elections!
Nancy Pelosi beats Donald
Trump every day! Amy
Klobuchar tried a bit of that on
Wednesday: “I have an idea for
how we can stop sexism on the
Internet. We can nominate a
woman for a candidate.” ( Who
wants to tell her about 2016?)
But as Wednesday’s debate
wore on, it started to feel like the
first one where we were truly
grappling with gender dynamics.
Not the platonic ideal of a
mixed-gender field — a tableau
promoting the country’s
progress — but how the
undercurrents of dismissiveness
and frustration and manners
play out onstage during an
elimination game. Here were
two women staring at the less-
prepared but more “electable”
male candidates next to them,
trying to keep the steam from
coming out of their ears.
for Warren, that candidate
was Bloomberg, who swaggered
up to a podium he’d essentially
rented for hundreds of millions
of dollars, having bypassed all of
the debates’ qualifying rules
until the rules were simply
changed to suit him.
“None of them accused me of
anything other than maybe they
didn’t like a joke I told,”
Bloomberg said, brushing off
past accusations of sexism by
falling back on sexism’s most
maddening defense: Some
women just can’t take a joke.
H e went on to praise his
hiring and promotion record of
female employees, which did not
impress Warren.
“I hope you heard what his
defense was,” s he addressed the
audience. “ ‘I’ve been nice to
some women.’ ”
Amy Klobuchar’s foil,
meanwhile, was Pete Buttigieg,
the former South Bend, Ind.,
mayor whose scrappy rise
derailed Klobuchar’s plan for
midwestern domination.
Hesse from C1
MONICA HESSE
Klobuchar unleashed the id of frustrated women as she railed against Buttigieg
ethan miller/agence France-presse/getty images
From left, candidates Mike Bloomberg, elizabeth Warren, Bernie sanders, Joe Biden, P ete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar at the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas.John locher/associated press etienne laurent/epa-eFe/shutterstockUPLOADED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws