The Farming Wit and Wisdom of Mike Bloomberg

Victor Davis Hanson  . . . "Moreover, I seriously doubt whether farmers are going to vote against Trump should Bloomberg or anyone else be the Democratic nominee. The latest poll shows a record 83 percent of them approve of Trump’s tenure. Most farmers so far have stuck with the president in his trade stand-off with China in the belief that past asymmetries with Europe and Japan, but especially with China, on matters of food importation and export had to be addressed. And they seem willing to endure short-term hardship for long-term parity, and with it, greater profitability.
"Bloomberg’s candidacy is supposed to appeal to suburbanites, and perhaps moderate Republican women and independents in particular, while drawing minorities to a supposedly seasoned, big-city mayor whose past constituencies were heavily non-white. Most concede that Bloomberg would not steal anyone from Trump’s base, and likely not from the working classes of either party. And we can see why.
"But as the prior wit and wisdom of Bloomberg keep emerging, and as his campaign, fueled by a billion dollars, blankets the airwaves, it is hard to see what advantages he brings, either over his own rivals or over incumbent Trump.
"All that is in addition to the general paradox of a party that rails about racism, toxic masculinity, and white privilege, with anti-rich overtones, looking now at a rich, white, male multibillionaire to buy an election and thus save the party from itself.Bloomberg has only been a candidate for a few days, and already he seems in the past to have insulted, as a group, professional women, minority youth, poor would-be homeowners, and unthinking farmers and factory workers. . . .

Mr. Hanson was a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism.