Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg speaking to the Alabama Democratic Conference convention in Montgomery, Ala., Saturday, Feb. 8, 2020: Glynn Wilson

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Driving into the Alabama capital city always feels like a nostalgia trip.

It’s impossible to drive down the exit ramp off I-65 on Herron Street, make my way over to Dexter Avenue and head up the hill to the old capitol without having a flashback to the first time I saw it, when George C. Wallace was running for governor the fifth time in 1982.

Regular readers will remember that story from my memoir, Jump On The Bus: Make Democracy Work Again.

It was a different story Saturday. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was coming to town, an actual self-made billionaire business man (from the news business no less), unlike Donald Trump, who inherited his wealth.

Bloomberg has decided a bit late to run for president as a Democrat, it seems, to take on another New York billionaire, Republican Donald Trump. But that description is about the only thing Trump and Bloomberg have in common. The contrasts between them could not be more stark.

When Trump came to court the conservative, Christian Republican people of Alabama in 2015, he chose a small football stadium in Mobile.

Bloomberg took direct aim at the heart of what’s left of the old Democratic Party establishment in Montgomery at the Embassy Suites Hotel on Water Street.

It’s imperative that we make a few things very clear here, even though it’s no longer our job to repeat what he said in a six or eight inch AP style news story written in past tense, passive voice on the eighth grade-level for people with IQs of 95, working people who deliver Fritos corn chips to quick marts for a living, or Budweiser beer. Average IQ used to be 100 for a reason. But the Asian education market has been beating the U.S. market for the past 40 years, driving the average IQ in the U.S. down to 95.

These people, who seem to be such a curious mystery to the rest of the national press, don’t read news in newspapers anymore. Some never did. They get their news from talk radio on the way to and from work, maybe catch some Fox News at night or on the weekends. Most don’t watch or listen at all. They get their news from friends, these days mainly on Facebook.

Besides, we ran both events in their entirety on Facebook live. People can now watch the videos for themselves. You only need to watch one, since he delivered the same speech at both events.

Since everyone wants to know what I thought of his speech, let me get that out of the way.

As I said on Facebook last night, it was a fine, brief, boilerplate political speech focusing on the so-called “kitchen table” issues of health care, jobs and education, with a little more environment thrown in than Alabama democrats are used to. I honestly don’t think there is a politician in Alabama history who has ever uttered the words “climate change” in that town before. Even the Alabama Sierra Club is hesitant to talk about global warming.

Maybe they will listen to this billionaire from New York, instead of the other one.

I’ve tried to get Democratic Party politicians to talk about it for years, but they are still afraid of being called “greenies” by the Republicans like Joe Turnham when he ran for Congress a dozen years back.

Historians used to like to say the South is 10 years behind the rest of the country in everything, but that was 20 years ago. Now it’s more like 15 years behind, since the more you stand still, the further behind you fall. But I digress.

Then Bloomberg tossed in a little pitch for actually standing up for the United States Constitution, not something you hear about often in Montgomery. If they had their way, the Republicans in charge of every branch of government would put the Confederate flag back up on the old capitol building and bring back slavery. Even the Trump trolls on Facebook and Twitter would have a hard time arguing with me about that. They are all for it.

After we elected Barack Obama as the first African American president in 2008, and with experts predicting a permanent demographic shift in the U.S. electorate by 2020 to a more diverse coalition, we thought we had witnessed the final battle of the Civil War. It was not to be.

Trump used mind games and word tricks and Twitter tweets to fool enough of the people and fuel a rekindling of those old, confederate feelings, and got himself elected dictator-king without even the New York Times seeing the writing on the wall, much less Bloomberg News.

I saw it coming. So did my good friend and news business partner David Underhill of Mobile. As a leftist intellectual with a Harvard degree he would be appalled at the notion that we need one billionaire oligarch to save us from the evils of another. But for good or ill, that’s the world we seem to be living in today whether we like it or not.

New American Journal graphic by Walter Simon. Art Market Place

It’s not our fault that a few people have amassed all the wealth in the world while most of us barely eat. Maybe we can find one who will pay us $15 an hour. That’s what Bernie wants. Will big business and the Democratic Party establishment in New York and Washington let us have it?

While they don’t spend much time debating the U.S. Constitution in Montgomery, since they still don’t much like the federal government around here, or talk a lot about saving the environment since that might cost some redneck a minimum wage job, the people in Alabama do still stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag after the prerequisite prayer before every political event, never mind the separation of church and state. This was true even among the mostly African American Democrats in Montgomery at the Alabama Democratic Conference annual convention where Bloomberg spoke first.

Even the reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser put his hand on his heart and recited the pledge louder than most. Is this part of the new professionalism? I always felt a little uncomfortable doing that as a news reporter. We were supposed to remain objective and neutral. This is something that should be reserved for elementary school kids, not full grown adults. I was even uncomfortable doing it as a kid.

Do they still do that in New York and Washington?

The question is, what if people put as much fervor and patriotism into protecting the Constitution and working to defend that as they do pledging allegiance to a flag?

Anyway, Bloomberg thanked U.S. Senator Doug Jones of Birmingham for standing up for the Constitution this past week by voting to convict Trump and remove him from office in the Senate impeachment trial. That quote was conveniently missing from the Montgomery Advertiser story about the event. What are they afraid of? A bunch of Trump troll comments on their Facebook page?

Our full coverage: Senate Votes Along Party Lines to Acquit Trump in Impeachment Trial

All in all, attending and covering Bloomberg’s appearance in town was quite easy going and pleasant, especially compared to standing in a football stadium being glared at by rednecks in MAGA caps and listening to Trump drone on, and on, about himself and nothing for an hour.

Even the food and drinks were free at the Alabama State University event. Bloomberg was buying. He wasn’t asking for $2 donations from poor Democrats just so he could stand on the debate stage and run for president just to get famous and write a best selling book after losing.

Bloomberg does not need the money, or the notoriety. He is very concerned, however, that we are losing a grip on our democracy and the planet, and he thinks he could be the one who could beat Trump in November.

I don’t know if he can win a Democratic Party primary or not, especially jumping in this late. It looks as if we are headed for a historic brokered convention this summer anyway, since none of the declared Democrats running so far have been able to emerge from the pack or seem to have a plan for unifying all the disparate factions.

Must I toss in the old saw from Will Rogers for the new millennial crowd who have never read a book?

“I’m not a member of any organized political party,” the cowboy actor and Cherokee humorist is often quoted as saying. “I’m a Democrat.”

After the recent debacle in Iowa, where the new voting app crashed and burned, it looks like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is the front runner, barely, leading the socialist democratic left wing of the party, with Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, emerging as a second place challenger with the so-called “moderate” wing of the party. Old former Vice President Joe Biden, the moderate who was seen as the early front runner with the Democratic establishment, seems to be fading. Then there are Senators Elizebeth Warren on the left and Amy Klobuchar in the middle. Everyone else on the debate stage remains in single digits in the polls and will be gone from the scene soon enough.

Can Bloomberg Win?

Can Mike Bloomberg break through on Super Tuesday March 3 in states like Alabama and grab some delegates for himself to be a player at the convention?

Dr. Joe Reed of the Alabama Democratic Conference brings on Presidential Candidate Mike Bloomberg to speak Saturday at the group’s annual convention in Montgomery, Ala., Feb. 8, 2020: Glynn Wilson

Dr. Joe Reed seems to think so. He’s one of the most beloved figures in Alabama politics by some, yet hated by many Democrats across the state for the events of the past few years, still holding on to the levers of power in Montgomery like a drowning man clinging to a few tree branches on the flooding riverbank. Or at least he’s willing to take Bloomberg’s money to give it a go and try to turn out the black vote one more time.

Hey, he recently managed to see his son get elected Mayor of Montgomery. He’s been trying to build a political empire for decades through the lessons of the old Wallace spoils system and nepotism. Maybe he can take this opportunity to have his final hurrah and give someone else a chance soon.

It’s hard to really blame him for thinking nepotism is the route to political success. It seems to work for white people like Donald Trump, the Bush family, even Joe and Hunter Biden.

The Trumps and Bloombergs will come and go, and I wish Mr. Bloomberg all the best since it is also our mission to save democracy and the planet, whether anyone else around here will talk about these things at all.

A Pitch

If you really want to help, Mike, we are working on seeking funding for a new social media app based on a well thought out altruistic concept to take on the selfish gene basis of Facebook and Trump’s success. Our human evolutionary balance between these two necessary but competing genes is out of whack. The only thing that can really save us now is recognizing this is the problem, and doing something about it.

We don’t need no more selfies or tweets. We need a well organized system of getting real news out to people and a social media platform that allows people to organize with an altruistic intent, not focused on individual psychology but on the sociology of the real problems and solutions.

In his stump speeches now, Bloomberg is calling himself the “unTrump.”

Like Zuckerberg when he wrote Facebook’s garbled mission statement, Bloomberg could use a briefing on this, if he is willing to listen.

Otherwise our fate will remain in the hands of billionaires with only a limited understanding of the science and social science driving our destiny. Scientists didn’t use to think so, believing evolution and natural selection took millions of years for changes to show up in a species, but we now know is it possible to influence human evolution in the short term — for good or ill.

If we continue down the current path, we are destined for a crash of epic proportions

If you must understand it in Biblical terms, we are hurtling toward the “end times,” baby. We could all watch it happen right before our very eyes on Facebook live. Or at least some of us could hit the pause button and try to do something about it. You choose. You know where I stand.