There is “no way” an independent candidate can defeat President Donald Trump in the 2020 elections, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement on Monday.
Bloomberg’s remarks came after former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said he is seriously considering running for president in 2020 as an independent candidate, The Hill reported.
Bloomberg did not mention Schultz in his statement, but emphasized that “In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the president. That's a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can't afford to run it now. We must remain united, and we must not allow any candidate to divide or fracture us. The stakes couldn’t be higher.”
Bloomberg, a former independent who recently re-registered as a Democrat, said that when he considered running for president as an independent, “The data was very clear and very consistent. Given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, there is no way an independent can win. That is truer today than ever before.”
The former New York mayor also stressed that what is most important is to defeat Trump in 2020, which is why “Last fall I spent over $100 million of my own money to elect Democrats to the House, because I believed it was absolutely imperative to ensure a congressional counterweight to President Trump” as a first step to his defeat in 2020.
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