The Michael Bloomberg campaign posted a series of bizarre tweets during Tuesday night’s Democrat presidential debate broadcast by CNN in Des Moines, Iowa.
The former mayor of New York City was not among the six candidates vying for the Democrat nomination on the debate stage, having decided to avoid both the February 3 Iowa caucuses and the February 11 New Hampshire primary. His strategy instead has been to flood the country with television ads, all aimed at winning the March 3 Super Tuesday primaries in 14 states, including California and Texas.
To date Bloomberg has reportedly spent over $150 million on his campaign, and he has promised to spend much more of his estimated $50 billion fortune to defeat President Trump in 2020, either as the party’s nominee or in support of the party’s nominee. He has risen in some national polls to support from five percent to seven percent.
But his campaign’s flurry of dozens of tweets during the two hours of the Democrat debate raise the question if he has significantly damaged his brand as a serious candidate.
The tweets were so unusual, many thought the Bloomberg campaign twitter account had been hacked, but the campaign subsequently announced there had been no hack and it was all part of the campaign’s communication plan.
Tuesday night’s tweet storm began unusually, when candidate Bloomberg retweeted the campaign twitter account’s announcement of a series of “fun tweets” coming:
Here is a sampling of the “fun” tweets from the campaign,:
Bloomberg’s personal twitter account retweeted another of the campaign’s Tuesday night tweets:
At the end of the evening, Bloomberg tweeted that his campaign staff’s tweets were designed to capture the attention of voters on a night he was not a participant in the CNN hosted debate of six other contenders for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2020.
The campaign did succeed in capturing the attention of many voters with Tuesday night’s tweets.
It remains to be seen, however, whether that had the effect of improving or hurting Bloomberg’s chances of capturing the Democrat presidential nomination in 2020.