There is a YouTube video featuring Michael Bloomberg speaking at the University of Oxford on the verge of Trump’s inauguration in December 2016. The video reveals much about Bloomberg’s beliefs and thinking: He is dismissive of the working class, seeing them as ignorant and insufficiently intelligent to be able to find useful work in this advanced technological age. He sees himself as a member of an intellectual elite. 

And the voters will quickly grasp his real opinion of them. They are unlikely to vote for someone who sees them as serfs in need of guidance and patronage from nobility such as himself.

In three years, Donald Trump has blown apart Bloomberg’s theory that the working class is composed of useless oafs. Under Trump’s policies, the workers that Bloomberg wrote off have found jobs and it wasn’t necessary for the government to hire them with make-work programs.

It is clear that Bloomberg’s mind rarely treads beyond the intellectual bounds of Manhattan and Wall Street. His description of agriculture is a comedy. He thinks there is nothing to it to run a farm and that any dumb person can be a farmer. Bloomberg may realize that food originates from farmers, not from grocery stores, but he has only a foggy idea of how that happens. He reveals himself as a classic New Yorker who is under the impression that the world ends at the Hudson river.

Bloomberg and Carl Pope, a former executive director of the Sierra Club, wrote a book together titled Climate of Hope.

From reading their book, I think it is fair to say that both Pope and Bloomberg lightly realize that just as food does not originate in the grocery store, electricity does not originate at the wall outlet. They realize that there is some infrastructure that generates the electricity and transmits it to the wall outlet. But they think that it is being done in a manner that is all wrong.

We are using coal and natural gas to generate that electricity. To them, we should be using windmills and solar panels instead. Pope has the excuse that he was a Harvard history major. It is very clear that he has absolutely no understanding of electricity infrastructure. Bloomberg, on the other hand, was an electrical engineering major at Johns Hopkins, so he has less excuse. Yet there is no sign he understands much about the nation’s electrical grid, either. He only knows that is all wrong because it is not being powered by windmills and solar panels.

Bloomberg gave $50 million to the Sierra Club for their Beyond Coal campaign. Bloomberg claims that Pope opened his mind about the danger of coal when he provided the “numbers” in 2011. The numbers in question are exaggerated, junk-science claims by the Sierra Club, warning of death and disease from burning coal.

Bloomberg does not appear to harbor any skepticism concerning the power elite or establishment. That may be because they are his friends and he is a member of that tribe. It does not occur to him that climate scientists might be embellishing their claims of climate doom in order to improve their own careers. The corruption of science by federal financial support was highlighted in Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address. The claims of climate science are obviously embellished in order to influence public policy and the welfare of the climate science academic discipline.

Anyone having firsthand experience with computer modeling and the disbursement of federal research funds knows instantly that the claims of climate science to predict the climate 100 years into the future by using computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere is corrupt science inspired by the desire for money and fame. I doubt that Bloomberg ever harbored skepticism concerning predictions of climate doom by the climate science clique.

If he is ever elected president Bloomberg’s public policy proposals will be the ideas that emanate from his important friends and acquaintances that share his Manhattan and Wall Street-centric views. 

And it's not just on climate science that makes Bloomberg an intellectual midget.

Bloomberg’s views on minorities and crime are not reflections of authentic racism. He just sees the world as divided into top people, like himself and other rich Wall Street types, and everyone else. Heavy-handed treatment of criminals by the police is simply his solution for the problem of unruly peasants. But not every black person is a criminal and not surprisingly they get upset if they are constantly treated as suspects.

People may sell their political support to Bloomberg but they are unlikely to feel good about it. Bloomberg is buying support from Democratic operatives that he hires and from left leaning organizations that he gives money to. The voters will at some point understand that Bloomberg’s supporters are bought rather than heartfelt believers. They will realize that Bloomberg is a Mr. Fancy Pants, not someone concerned with the average man’s problems.

Bloomberg was born a middle-class descendent of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. His father was a bookkeeper. But through a natural talent for leadership -- and the Harvard Business School -- he made a lot of money, ascended into the social elite, and never looked back.

Once he succeeded in joining the Manhattan and Wall Street elite, it is not surprising that he lost all skepticism concerning the worthiness of the elites. Bloomberg would not be running for president if he harbored doubts concerning the natural right of his particular club of elites to rule everyone else.

Although both Trump and Bloomberg are natural leaders, and both lived their adult lives in New York City, their backgrounds are distinctly different. Trump was born with a small fortune premised on entrepreneurship. Trump is an out-of-the-box thinker with powerful instincts. Trump is a natural skeptic. Bloomberg became a card-carrying member of the elite as soon as he was able. Bloomberg is a plodding thinker applying formulas that he learned at the Harvard Business School and Salomon Brothers to his life. Trump is a genuine genius instinctively able to take roads that no one else sees. Because he is bold and a risk-taker, Trump is often in trouble.

When Bloomberg tries to empathize with the problems of the voters, he comes across as wooden and artificial. Trump comes across as genuine because he is genuine, and he is loved by his fans.

If Bloomberg gets the Democratic nomination, a remote possibility, Trump, a vastly more talented politician is sure to win.

Norman Rogers is the author of the book: Dumb Energy: A Critique of Wind and Solar Energy. He has websites here, here and here.

Image credit: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0