‘Lucky’: How Warren took down Bloomberg

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) evisceration of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on a debate stage in February 2020 was weeks in the making, according to the new book “Lucky,” by The Hill’s Amie Parnes and NBC News’s Jonathan Allen. 

Warren had been looking for ways to make up ground in the primary, and had decided that she needed to take a scalp to show she was still a serious White House contender after losses in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, says “Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency.”

The book on the 2020 presidential race will be published and available for sale on Tuesday.

She was particularly eager to take on Bloomberg, a billionaire who was surging in the polls after an eleventh-hour entry into the race.

Warren was incensed after the Democratic National Committee changed its rules to allow Bloomberg to make the debate stage in February, solidifying her decision to attack him on stage, the new book reports.

Warren prepared for the February debate in Las Vegas by sharpening her attacks over Bloomberg’s wealth, derogatory comments about women and support for “stop and frisk,” the controversial policing practice in New York City that studies showed disproportionately impacted people of color.

“Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop and frisk,” Warren said in one remark. “Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another.”

The debate drew a series of negative headlines for Bloomberg and led some observers to speculate that his nascent campaign was over. Chief among the beneficiaries of his demolishing was now-President Biden, who was competing with Bloomberg at the time for the centrist mantle in the primary race.

“That was a total evisceration, literally limb by limb in front of millions of people, but good for us,” one top Biden aide told the authors of “Lucky.”

“He was still going to be a major problem for us, but that changed things,” the aide said.

Bloomberg ultimately dropped out of the race shortly after Super Tuesday in March after only winning the contest in American Samoa.