I doubt actually buying Democrat delegates would have been nearly as expensive as trying to win them was for Michael Bloomberg.

Michael R. Bloomberg spent more than $900 million on his failed bid for the White House by the end of February, a spectacular sum and the most ever for a self-funded politician in American history.

Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, poured more than $500 million into television advertising and $100 million on digital ads during the course of his roughly 100-day campaign, according to a new filing made Friday with the Federal Election Commission. He spent tens of millions of dollars more on a raft of media consultants, pollsters and digital strategists, the filing showed.

That, as usual, is where the grifting comes in (though ad buys are their own grift) and where his own people took him to the cleaners.

 His lone victory was in the faraway territory of American Samoa. He secured only 58 delegates in the latest projections — at a cost of more than $15 million a piece, a price-tag that is sure to rise because the new filing does not cover the first days of March.

If Bloomberg had just started buying superdelegates, he could have gotten a much better deal than $15 million a piece. But that was probably was what he was angling to do for the convention. It just never got that far and he ended up with nothing.

But at this spending rate, even Bloomberg couldn’t have afforded to buy the election.

Meanwhile that $900 million could have been put to much better use during the coronavirus crisis. Had Bloomberg been a bit more patient and actually spent that money helping people, he might have had a real shot at the nomination. Instead, in his usual fashion, he’s donating $40 million to help fight the coronavirus… in Africa.