William Randolph Hearst, back before World War One when Willy was an ultra-rich DIY Politician, from New York City...
Both men are nominal news media magnates, Hearst Penny Dreadful Newspapers, Bloomberg On Line Business News, both were politically ubiquitous being both democrats and republicans at various times and both solved political problems by spending their own money. Of course I think Hearst was at least initially, the far more progressive politician being an advocate for women's suffrage, municipal ownership of utilities, trust busting & generous old age pensions. In time though, Hearst would try to start his own third party, feud with the likes of NY Governor Al Smith and later, FDR before becoming a rather embarrassing republican stalwart. Ubiquitous indeed.
Bloomberg on the other hand is charting the same course, from the republican mayor of New York to free spending candidate for the democratic presidential nomination, although I'd never call any aspect of Mike's public career "progressive" if anything he is far more opportunistic than was Hearst.
And like Hearst he is running as an aggressive outsider with cash to burn on behalf of his supporters, allegedly he hates Trump with a mortal passion, but he also hates the prospect of a 70% Top Rate as well, so instead of deploying his wealth strategically to interdict Trump this fall, Mike is making a kamikaze run for President as a democrat to defect Bernie Sanders possible March to Glory.
Y'know like Hearst's Late Guilded Age, the USA just has too many damn billionaires with time on their hands, who think politics is somehow easy and who then run for office for entirely trivial reasons, to chase away the mid life crisis quite literally.
I dunno Sanders may be right, maybe billionaires should be taxed down off their Olympian Heights...I mean look what they do with their money.
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