This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, March 6, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg spent combined around $700 million to attract voters.

Voters for their part weren't buying.

What should that tell us about montras surrounding big money and politics?

Scott Blackburn is research director for the Institute for Free Speech.

He comments.

Well, I think the biggest takeaway has to be from a money and politics perspective,

the failure once again of large wealthy

individuals to to be able to buy voters and in fact voters had their say over over the spending in the race.

What Mike Bloomberg did on Super Tuesday was was truly unprecedented.

He spent records amounts of money. He spent orders of magnitude

more money than in previous primary races. He spent about $14 for every one dollar that the next largest

spender in the race, Bernie Sanders spent.

And he spent $100 more than any every one dollar

that Joe Biden spent the presumed winner of Super Tuesday.

And nonetheless, despite all of that, he managed only a handful of delegates, voters decided. I hear your message, Mike Bloomberg, but I do not buy what you're selling.

Now, Michael Bloomberg can't be everywhere at once. He was trying to run a campaign based on money, not on like small

town halls, going from town to town, from state to state, meeting with a lot of individual people.

This was sort of Biden's strategy.

However important money is, and money is important to elections, maybe he just didn't do it,

the spend it the right way. That is, maybe he just didn't get out there in a way that's of course

...