The Economist UK - 30.11.2019

The EconomistNovember 30th 2019 United States 41

2

1

the 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 in

the 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. 7

I

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 with

respect 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 abusers

Sanctions

Financial carpet-bombing