Mike Bloomberg Counting on Contested Convention To Grab Democratic Nomination

Richard Moorhead   |  

Mar 3, 2020

Mike Bloomberg is counting on a contested convention as his path to winning the Democratic nomination.

The former Mayor of New York City outright admitted that such an event is the “only way I can win” in an interview with NBC on Monday.

The ultrabillionaire declined to predict if he’d win any states at all during the interview. His admission of a brokered strategy convention could be proof enough that he realizes Joe Biden has consolidated the lane of moderate Democratic voters he hoped to marshal when announcing his late-stage bid for President.

Bloomberg’s strategy is reminiscent of that of John Kasich’s 2016 campaign for the Republican nomination, which counted on being handed the nomination at the convention after only winning one state during the primary process.

Talk of contested and brokered conventions surfaces almost every election cycle, but a true contested major party convention hasn’t actually occurred since 1952. The prospect of a contested convention isn’t impossible this time, as a crowded late field of Democratic candidates could mean no candidate obtains the 50% of delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot.

The strongest indication that a brokered convention campaign strategy might actually be viable is the stated preferences of the Democratic Party’s ‘superdelegates,’ party elites who have voting powers divorced from the democratic primary and caucus process. Queries of the establishment-friendly superdelegates have already revealed the party elites are chomping at the bit at the prospect of blocking a potential Bernie Sanders nomination, even if the democratic socialist leads with a plurality of delegates.

Bloomberg would have to convince the superdelegates to support him instead of Biden. In any case, it’s rather sad that a nominally ‘major’ party candidate such as Bloomberg is openly pinning his campaign strategy on byzantine convention tactics instead of appealing to the voting public.