Budowsky: Bloomberg should match small donors, give $500M

Intensely patriotic small donors from across America have a declared a state of emergency for American democracy. They are rising with a passion and vengeance to donate more than $170 million to ActBlue alone in the days following the attempt by President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to steal yet another Supreme Court seat following the death of the Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I propose that former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has already performed great services to democracy, publicly state he will match small donor contributions to win the Armageddon-like elections in November, with another $500 million in donations, with strong focus on Democratic control of the Senate.

I propose that the wealthiest Democrats make similar commitments, in solidarity with small donors and all who want the state of emergency for American democracy to end favorably for democracy.

Mayor Bloomberg, other wealthy Democrats and small donors have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to defend democracy and change the course of American and world history.

Trump and McConnell are close to executing the most brazen and reprehensible abuses of power and attacks against American democracy since slavery and the Civil War ripped apart our nation. It is no coincidence that Trump suffers from high unpopularity in our country and around the world, or that McConnell is the single most unpopular and disliked national politician in modern American history.

According to the latest RealClearPolitics summary of polling, McConnell’s favorable rating is only 25.4 percent, and his unfavorable rating is more than double that, at 51 percent. Democrats running for the Senate and House should make McConnell and his craven abuses of power a major issue.

Trump has already soiled and demeaned the presidency. McConnell has already destroyed the institution of the Senate and turned the formerly great body into another House of Representatives. Now Trump and McConnell would turn the Supreme Court into a partisan and ideological weapon of the Republican Party.

The Trump-McConnell strategy, which I believe will fail one way or the other, is to hyper-motivate the Trump base on the mistaken belief that the unpopular Trump can be reelected president with a higher turnout from those voters, and that the enormously unpopular McConnell can keep control of the Senate through the same seamy tactics.

They are wrong. What is happening today, instead, is that the Democratic base is just as hyper-motivated as the Trump base. Equally important, key voting groups such as women, including suburban women swing voters, are alarmed and appalled by the prospect that Roe v. Wade will be reversed, and ObamaCare would be destroyed during the worst disease crisis in a century, made far more deadly by Trump’s negligence, by a packed Trump-McConnell Supreme Court.

If the McConnell court-packing succeeds, the public outrage would be so great, and turnout of outraged voters would be so powerful, that Democrats would likely regain control of the Senate. There would be a strong majority support to increase the number of justices and judges, to unpack federal courts from McConnell’s abuses.

Turnout from minority, young and senior voters will surge. They know a reelected Trump, Republican control of the Senate and a Trump-McConnell packed Supreme Court will decimate civil rights and equal rights, bring new attacks which could succeed against Social Security and Medicare, and destroy all hope of addressing the epic catastrophe of climate change.

There will be celebrations by a dictator in Moscow who is boldly supporting Trump Republicans, mourning and outrage throughout the democratic world, and sadness from many military families who know it is reprehensible to view those who lose their lives in service to our country as “suckers” and “losers.”

It would be an extraordinary moment if Bloomberg stood in solidarity and matched small donations to ActBlue and Democratic campaign committees, to make a powerful, timeless stand to fight for, and win, the Armageddon-like battle for American democracy in 2020.

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was chief deputy majority whip of the House of Representatives. He holds an LLM in international financial law from the London School of Economics.