Former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg has officially announced that he will not be running for president, regardless of a potential Trump nomination. Bloomberg recently announced he’d been contemplating entering the race as an independent. This gave many voters, who felt trapped in the two-party system, a new option.
Bloomberg detailed his reasons not to run Monday in an article on his website, Bloomberg View. “I believe I could win a number of diverse states,” he wrote, “but not enough to win the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to win the presidency.”
He believes that splitting the voting population could lead to the exact thing that he wants the country to avoid: President Donald Trump.
“Extremism is on the march, and unless we stop it, our problems at home and abroad will grow worse,” he said, referring to what he sees as extreme, uncompromising views on both sides of the political spectrum.
Bloomberg has long been the light at the end of a tumultuous primary campaign for many moderate voters. Still, many political analysts and Bloomberg himself believe that if he were to run, the electorate would be so evenly split that the ultimate decision would go to congress.
“The fact is, even if I were to receive the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, victory would be highly unlikely, because most members of Congress would vote for their party’s nominee,” Bloomberg wrote. “Party loyalists in Congress—not the American people or the Electoral College—would determine the next president.”
Having appeared on “The Apprentice” twice, Bloomberg is no stranger to the Donald. However, he believes that Trump’s political policies are downright dangerous for the country.
“We cannot ‘make America great again’ by turning our backs on the values that made us the world’s greatest nation in the first place,” Bloomberg said.
Without a ‘centrist’ option on the table, it looks like many will have to head back to campaigning for the popular choice: Anyone but Trump.