A day after Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar threw their support behind Joe Biden in Dallas, consolidating much of the moderate lane of the Democratic presidential primary, Michael Bloomberg is wondering why it couldn’t have been him.
At a campaign event Tuesday in Miami, a reporter asked Bloomberg why he shouldn’t join the former South Bend mayor and the current Minnesota senator and coalesce around Biden. “Why not coalesce around ME?” Bloomberg asked.
Bloomberg, who, prior to taking questions, argued that Bernie Sanders can’t win Florida, became visibly annoyed when another reporter suggested that he is taking votes from Biden by staying in the race. “Joe’s taking votes away from me,” Bloomberg shot back. “It goes in both directions. Have you asked Joe whether he’s going to drop out?”
He added: “I have no intention of dropping out. We’re in it to win it.” Despite spending half a billion dollars on advertising ahead of Super Tuesday, Bloomberg isn’t counting on winning any states, though. “I don’t know whether I’m going to win any,” he said. “You don’t have to win states; you have to win delegates.”
Bloomberg also revealed that he intends to win the nomination at the convention. “I think what happens here is that nobody gets a majority … and then you go to the convention and we’ll see what happens at the convention,” he said. Asked if he’s actively rooting for a contested convention, he said, “I don’t think I can win in any other way.”
He went on to defend the idea of deciding on a nominee at the convention. “Contested convention is a democratic process. There are rules in the Democratic Party of how you go about this.”
