jules witcover

WASHINGTON — For all the millions former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has sunk into television ads, he probably wishes now he would have hired a political strategist to advise him to stay out of that Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas Wednesday night.

After all, he wasn’t even on the ballot for Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, having already ducked the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, in favor of focusing his personal billions on the approaching March 3 Super Tuesday in 14 states, including delegate-rich California and Texas.

Instead, he plunged in, and encountered five other Democratic hopefuls In Vegas who had honed their debating skills through eight previous encounters in this election cycle. They were loaded for bear and cut him down to size, despite the $330 million he had already poured into his campaign, while they scraped to bankroll their own by begging for dollars, and developing deep resentment toward him in the process.

The result was the most contentious and bitter debate in recent memory, with Bloomberg facing a circular firing squad on his 12-year record of running New York. He was peppered with sharp questions about the stop-and-frisk police policy under his watch that enraged African Americans and other minority targets, and on wide allegations of mistreatment of women employees in his corporate workplace.

He surely could have seen it coming, but he seemed unprepared or at least frozen by its intensity. The assault was led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who had ample political strategy of her own to get Bloomberg in her sights. Her campaign, after an impressive start in Iowa, appeared to be fading as did those of former South Bend Mayor Peter Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden.

All of them lit into Bloomberg. Warren noted that he had entered into nondisclosure agreements with complaining women, insisting that he lift such commitments. When he lamely observed that “we’re not going to end these agreements because they were made consensually,” boos were heard from the audience. Warren also went after him on his failure to release his past tax returns, to which he said they were complicated and would be made public in a few weeks.

In all this, Sanders did not escape. He was pressed again for the release of more medical records in the wake of his recent heart attack, but he said he had made sufficient public disclosures.

Perhaps more significant were inquiries to Sanders on the cost of his major Medicare-for-all plan, which other candidates have said is unrealistic and impractical. It includes an eventual end to all private-industry health care insurance, for which premiums are paid by employers and trade unions.

Not surprisingly, such policies are greatly cherished by millions of affected employees who are unwilling to surrender them. Biden has specifically called for their retention while calling for a public insurance option along with Obamacare.

In Nevada, the retention of private insurance plans became a key issue for members of the large Culinary Workers Union, in a state of heavy tourism housing luxury hotels and restaurants.

Both Warren and Buttigieg have latched onto the Biden public option, with Buttigieg calling his health care plan “Medicare for all who want it.” In the Las Vegas debate, Biden pointedly reminded the audience that as vice president he was the architect of Obamacare, and aggressively defended it through the years of Republican efforts to “repeal and replace” it.

Ironically, the once highly controversial Obamacare over those years has become widely popular. Biden’s defense of it has been a little-appreciated gift to salaried working Americans. Hence the rush of his current rivals for the 2020 Democratic nomination to embrace it now. Whether that contribution will be rewarded in his own campaign is an uncertain other matter in the months ahead.

Editor’s note: Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.