The billionaire media mogul and three-time former New York mayor told Financial Times in an interview published Monday that he is “looking at all the options.”
Fellow New York billionaire Donald Trump has been leading polls on the Republican side for months, and Hillary Clinton only narrowly escaped Iowa with a victory over a self-described “democratic socialist.” Bloomberg, who is considering running as an independent, said Americans deserve “a lot better.”
Bloomberg has set a March deadline to determine whether he will run, and should he decide yes, he told the FT he would have to begin getting his name on ballots next month. He has signaled he could spend at least a billion dollars of his own money to sustain a campaign, according to a New York Times report citing anonymous sources briefed on his deliberations.
That’s not the funny part. The funny part is who’s advising him.
Bloomberg’s pollster, Douglas Schoen, outlined the case for his boss’s potential White House bid in an op-ed last week for the Wall Street Journal.
Pundits are missing a large group of centrist voters who opt out of partisan primaries, Schoen argued, pointing to the low turnout in Iowa.
“That’s the new silent majority: the millions of Americans who don’t participate in Democratic or Republican primaries. They are equally as fed up with the status quo, but they have a different approach to problem-solving and different policy prescriptions than those on the ideological extremes,” Schoen wrote.
That has created an opportunity for someone to mount an independent run, he argued:
“Who fits the bill? Michael Bloomberg, a centrist with a clear (and arguably unique) record in business as an entrepreneur and in politics as a three-term mayor of New York. Mr. Bloomberg is a fiscally prudent conciliator who advances pro-growth policies and takes tough stands.”
That’s right, the guy running Bloomberg’s numbers is none other than our old friend pollster Doug Schoen, who along with his partner in crime Pat Caddell is the obnoxious No Labels/Americans Elect centrist grifter that warned Obama could never win re-election in 2012 and that Hillary had to primary him, that Obama had to champion the Simpson/Bowles Catfood Commission, that the Democrats were the real extremists, that Obama had to become a right-wing Democrat in order to attract Tea Party votes, that Trump should have gotten into the race in 2012 as in independent, and my personal favorite, that Barack Obama should have dropped out of the 2012 race completely for the good of America.
It looks like Doug has found his Trojan Horse to sink the Democrats and get his massive austerity cuts by splitting votes in favor of the GOP in Bloomberg, so if there was any doubt that a Bloomberg run is more Nader than Perot, the fact that Doug Schoen is involved should have you running for the exits.
The Centrist Daleks are back to TRIANGULAAAAAAAATE it seems, and should Bloomberg actually run, keep in mind it only takes ruining one swing state with a third party bid to throw the presidency.
Keith P
Two words – Paul LePage.
Renie
what an ego – no way he can win but he can certainly draw away votes from the democratic nominee
Felonius Monk
Fvck Bloomberger with a rusty Nader.
Ex Libris
I wish him the same success as was enjoyed by President H. Ross Perot and President John Anderson.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
He blows up Connecticut, and maybe New Jersey. He can really fuck up Florida, if he’s lucky.
That’ll fuck things up, but good.
Matt McIrvin
So it’s basically “nominate Clinton or we’ll shoot this dog.” The dog being the country.
Paul in KY
Doesn’t he have the wrong candidate, ideologically? Nader was a left-winger, so he was bound to take (stupid) votes from us. How would that toad Bloomberg take votes from Hillary/Bernie?
Kropadope
Man, as if the people already running this year weren’t bad enough….
dr. bloor
I don’t think he does it. He’s got a massive ego, but he’s too precious to hit the pavement and shake hands with the hoi polloi that is (no, really!) so near and dear to his heart.
Brachiator
He’s getting bad advice. I’m not seeing any compelling reason for his candidacy.
And somehow, the prospect of a Plutocrat Presidential Race, involving Trump and Bloomberg, seems ridiculous.
Also, current and former mayors of New York have never succeeded to the presidency. Just one of those oddities of history.
And the problems is not that Bloomberg is a centrist, it is that on the national level he is a political nonentity.
Yutsano
@Ex Libris: I doubt he even gets that much traction. Bloomberg is either having a major ego trip or Schoen has his meat hooks in deep. Either way it’s a problem and unless this gets killed fast it will spell Republican president.
Linda Featheringill
Mr. Bloomberg, who seems to be well known on the East Coast, is a complete unknown throughout Flyover Country. Is he willing to do the ground work of introducing himself to millions of people who never heard of him?
Also, is he aware that there is a good deal of anti-NY prejudice in the hinterlands? That’s a strike against him before he even steps into the batter’s box.
I think he doesn’t have a chance.
Mike J
If Bloomberg wins he can appoint Trump chancellor.
OzarkHillbilly
@Paul in KY: You don’t become a 3 term mayor of NYC with out a significant # of Dem votes
schrodinger's cat
Yeah because all this anti Wall street sentiment is going to benefit Bloomberg, who made his money there. He will get zero traction.
Anoniminous
In Bloomberg land historic high turnout is low turnout.
AnonPhenom
President Bloomberg’s first order will be for the repeal of the Twenty-second Amendment because something, something crisis…
Zandar
@Brachiator:
With Doug Schoen that’s expected. Bloomberg knows this guy has a policy agenda, and is okay with it, which is something that should definitely be giving people pause.
Excatly who is the “Bloomberg should run” audience other than No Labels pundits?
max
It looks like Doug has found his Trojan Horse to sink the Democrats and get his massive austerity cuts by splitting votes in favor of the GOP in Bloomberg, so if there was any doubt that a Bloomberg run is more Nader than Perot, the fact that Doug Schoen is involved should have you running for the exits.
Oh, I’m quite certain that that’s the way it is intended, and in fact, is probably intended as a Hillary killer.
The Centrist Daleks are back to TRIANGULAAAAAAAATE it seems, and should Bloomberg actually run, keep in mind it only takes ruining one swing state with a third party bid to throw the presidency.
Yes, but Bloomberg has no appeal in swing states, except maybe Florida. (Which may quite possibly be irrelevant this year – either the state or Bloomberg’s effect on the swing.) Bloomberg’s move turn New York into a swing state, although there is a good chance it was already going to be a swing state.
I would further add that while Schoen is perpetually trying to destroy Democrats, he’s actually really terrible at it. In particular he seems to be the king of boomerangs. He is, however, excellent at destroying centrists.
So, on balance, considering the possible scenarios at hand (still a bunch of them) in almost all of them Bloomberg is a negative result for centrists (who tend to be establishment Republicans in practice), a waste for Wall Street, and adds in the strong bonus possiblity of turning himself and his pals into a wide grease spot in the road. So I’m completely fine with this. If we can get Harold Ford to endorse him, it would be AWESOME.
max
[‘Please proceed, Mr. Mayor.’]
Felonius Monk
Maybe Trump can convince Bloomy to be his running mate on the Billionaire ticket.
Archon
I’m not convinced a Bloomberg candidacy hurts the Democrats over the Republicans. In fact I’d argue that if it’s Trump or Cruz he would end up taking a lot more votes from the right then from the left.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: People THOUGHT Nader was a left-winger at the time. He had support from left-wingers and his stated platform was pretty left-wing.
But I wonder if he really was, in any temperamental sense. He made his bones as a consumer advocate, which is really a different thing from being, say, a worker advocate. He said outright in 2000 that he’d prefer a Bush win over a Gore win, and people assumed it was “heighten the contradictions” talk but maybe it wasn’t. More recently he’s latched onto weird plutarchic-authoritarian fantasies of billionaires getting together and saving the world.
Felonius Monk
@Archon:
Doubt it. Bloomberg is so anti-gun that the right wants nothing to do with him.
Chris
Maybe Republicans have concluded that Trump IS a Clinton induced plant, and are retaliating with Bloomberg as their own.
Anoniminous
Chuck this one into the Who Cares? file.
But it does go to show how desperate our Infortainment Mediums are to fake-up Important! News! to amp their eyeball count.
LanceThruster
Spoilerman to the rescue!
artem1s
https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates#Requirements_for_independents
He’s gotta file in TX by May 9 and have get all his signatures by the beginning of August? I don’t believe for one minute he can collect enough signatures to get on enough ballots to actually be competitive. So this is either a grift a la the Pauls or he’s trying to be a spoiler. If he only files in swing states, then it will be obvious what he is doing. If he takes the wrong swing state away from the GOP, say OH or FL, He pretty much guarantees a victory for the Democrat candidate because it makes it nearly impossible for them to get to 270. Electoral math still favors Dems. Name recognition hurts him. I don’t see this being good news for the GOP at all. They’d have a better chance if they flew in RMoney at the last minute.
Frankensteinbeck
I am relaying only hearsay, but doesn’t Bloomberg do this every four years and chicken out? So I was told. If he really only intends to run if Bernie wins, it’s moot.
@max:
I agree that No Labels is a massive ratfucking operation hoping to drag votes away from Democrats to be wasted on a meaningless third party, and to rehabilitate Republican crush-the-poor-and-minorities policies as ‘mature’ and ‘responsible’ like the divine Ronnie intended. And I also agree that they’ve been wild failures so far.
AnonPhenom
Is $39 Billion enough to ‘grease all the gears’ in Washington for 8 years?
Brachiator
@Zandar:
So I guess it’s “No danke, Schoen.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Linda Featheringill:
He doesn’t, but don’t tell his ego that.
El Caganer
Hi, I’m Mike Bloomberg. I’m running for President, and I want all of you to join me – let’s get America working again! Let’s make both sides do it!
FlipYrWhig
Isn’t this basically saying “People want something else, and Michael Bloomberg is something else, ergo people want Michael Bloomberg?” Is there any reason to think that the people who don’t vote in primaries are “centrist” rather than “busy”?
JPL
I never thought that the Supreme Court would decide an election. Now I fear that the House of Republicans will tell me who the next President is going to be.
Zandar
@Brachiator: Boooo. *claps*
Tim C.
I don’t think Bloomberg appeals to anyone.
Strongly antigun as Felonious points out, the anti-gun positions are a total disaster for him on the right. He might shave a percent or two from the GOP, but only from the Brooks/Broder wing of the party. That’s probably where his delusion is coming from. He probably thinks there are a ton of GOP professionals/business owners/chin-scratching-serious-Burkians out there when they are at most 10% of the Republican party. So maybe… maybe… he could carve out a chunk of the Democratic vote from our side’s serious “above it all” posers. But…. I don’t see him doing that Even if Sanders is the nominee, which I think is still unlikely, 2000 wasn’t all that long ago, lessons were learned I think.
amk
Gotta love how the dems here give up so easily just because yet another bored billionaire wants to save murka.
The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...
@Brachiator:
This, right here… outside of NYC, political junkies and the very, very very rich, who the hell even knows who Blumberg is?
Or cares?
And whilst Trump is a very, very very rich person who can con some people into thinking he’s just an ordinary guy, w/ a lot of money, there’s no way Blumberg can pull that off too…
Cacti
@Tim C.:
Bloomberg is another overhyped east coast pol, with about 0 appeal out of the tri-state area.
NonyNony
@FlipYrWhig:
No. People don’t vote in primaries for a whole lot of reasons. They may be too busy to vote. They may have genuinely no preference between the candidates up for President and no interest in local elections. They may not feel like associating with either the Dems or the GOP enough to vote in their primaries. They may be completely checked out of politics entirely and feel confident that whoever has the job will be “good enough”. They may not care at all about anything outside of their immediate day-to-day needs.
I find it hard to believe that there’s a significant fraction who don’t vote because the Dems are too far to the left and the GOPers are too far to the right. And of those who actually are in that middle group, I have no reason to believe that their preferences are “We should restrict guns and put taxes on sodas while cutting taxes for the wealthy and opening up immigration” rather than “we should jack up taxes on the rich guys, build a wall between the US and Mexico, and let people buy fully automatic weapons”. By Bloomberg’s definition that second group would be “centrists” – and those are the guys that Trump is appealing to rhetorically these days.
prob50
@Brachiator I see you are still among the league’s top pun-ters.
Archon
@Felonius Monk:
The 2nd Amendment absolutists are definitely vocal but they don’t represent anything close to a majority in the Republican party. Bloomberg appeals to the “I’m not a bigot or an ideologue, I just want my taxes cut” constituency of the GOP which I think is still fairly large, especially in blue states where outnumbered Republicans have disabused themselves of the idea that some right-wing total victory is just around the corner.
Matt McIrvin
@amk: I think he’s not a credible threat if the Democrats nominate Clinton. If the Democrats nominate Sanders, a bunch of “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” totebagger idiots are going to think about bailing.
SFAW
@Matt McIrvin:
Actually, it was a “things will get so bad under Bush that the backlash will usher in a new era of Liberalism.” Those may not be his exact words, but they’re pretty damn close to EXACTLY what he meant when he said it.
As the saying goes: “How’d THAT work out for you, dumbfuck?”
One of the many reasons why I hate that motherfucker with a passion.
WarMunchkin
I’m not nearly as scared of this guy as I could be. Probably because I’m just laughing at the idea of two old white jerk billionaires facing either the only female candidate in American history or a socialist who would use both of their entrails as exhibits in his systematic teardown of the plutocracy. Yes, I’m optimistic about our chances today.
Punchy
@Mike J: Nope. Trump is appointed to lead the Department of Da Fence.
Cacti
If Sanders is the nominee, the Dems are boned with or without Bloomberg.
CarolDuhart2
Yes, Bloomie is giving a lot of Dems flashbacks to 2000, but he’s not going to appeal to the Obama coalition in enough numbers to swing things this time. For one thing, while some of it likes his anti-gun stance, a lot more are not going to like how he went along with other abuses in NYC. Another thing: who really knows this guy? If I were to poll my friends and family, it would be Bloomberg who? At least Nader was already a household name as a crusader for the consumer and lhad an organization of true believers behind him.
Yes, folks are panicking about 2000 redux. But 2000 was a complacency year, with a good economy and more people unhappy about Monica than anything else, and feeling like no matter who was President, the good times will roll. This year, if the rise of Sanders and Trump mean anything, it certainly isn’t complacency.
Uncle Cosmo
@Brachiator: Bei mir, fickst du, Schoen!
(Usw….)
rk
I want Trump lose to some establishment type (Bush?, Kashic?) and then run as an independent in a fit of pique. It should be a race between Bloomberg, Trump, Hillary/Bernie and an establishment republican. Then every vote is really going to count and that’s what the country needs.
Germy
Is it possible Bloomberg could draw away votes from the republican nominee?
amk
@Matt McIrvin:
We can all afford to wait till we cross that bridge. If that bridge ever gets built at all.
The thugs are divided over a half-dozen clowns and we are freaking out over two sane candidates?
MattF
Completely OT:
The LIGO collaboration has announced a press conference on Thursday. This is the group that is attempting– has been attempting for a very long time– to measure gravitational waves. There was a rumor in the past week or so that they’ve finally succeeded. A very big deal, if true.
Cacti
@SFAW:
The German leftists made the same miscalculation at the end of the Weimar Republic.
“Once the fascists rule for a while, people will see how awful they are, and the proletariat revolution will follow!” The reality instead turned out to be: “Wait, the fascists have banned our political party and are going to kill us? Oops.”
Matt McIrvin
@Germy: No, because guns.
Frankensteinbeck
@Archon:
I don’t think that constituency is anything but a tiny fringe. The folks who want to stop welfare cheats, are uncomfortable with gays being out and visible, think contraceptives encourage risky behavior, that it’s relevant what a rape victim was wearing, and Tamir Rice looked dangerous so cops were justified in shooting him- BUT, they are definitely NOT racists, no, absolutely not, or religious crazies – is a quite large constituency.
EDIT – @SFAW:
Nader’s been appearing on FOX news, and not to repudiate them. The guy is definitely not a liberal anymore.
Matt McIrvin
@Cacti: They got to take over East Germany eventually! Of course, it was after millions of people had been murdered and the whole country had been bombed into slag and invaded, but still.
Cacti
@CarolDuhart2:
I think Bloomberg’s policy that would really sink him is his failed attempt to be the soft drink police.
Drinking soda is a bipartisan, across the board, American activity.
Mike J
@Punchy:
I suggested chancellor because Hindenburg ran, and won, as an independent in 1932.
But I understand having a pun too good to pass up.
Roger Moore
Anyone who wants to criticize Obama as “Republican Lite” should pay attention to this, because Bloomberg is the real thing.
Archon
@Cacti:
I’m a Clinton supporter but I disagree Sanders is “boned” in a general. First, while I suspect Obama wants Hillary to win I think Obama will be vocally and energetically campaigning for Sanders to protect his legacy. Second, no matter what the Chris Matthews of the world have to say about who is paying for Sanders social programs, compared to the Republicans tax plan( like Rubio, Cruz, and Trump) Bernie plans looks like it’s coming from a sober minded centrist. Lastly, in a polarized electorate no candidate Dem or Repub is getting less then 45 percent of the vote, so it’s really about turnout and convincing 10 percent of the electorate that you aren’t as crazy as the other guy. Bernie for all his weaknesses doesn’t come off as ridiculous as Trump, Cruz, or Rubio.
schrodinger's cat
@Cacti: In India too, when the leftist alternative to the Congress (which became one family fiefdom since Mrs Gandhi ascended office in the 70s) fizzled out it was replaced by the right wing nightmare of today not some leftist utopia.
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: In NY City & consider his opponents. Why would an actual Democratic voter (outside NYC) prefer him to Hillary or Bernie?
Bobby Thomson
@Brachiator: of course he’s getting bad advice. Go back, Schoen.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cacti: Actually, they were right, eventually every one did figure out how bad the Nazis were.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: The stupid ones (on our side) thought he was & voted for him. IMO, they could delude themselves that ole Ralphie himself wasn’t a Republican in disguise. Harder to do with Bloomie.
rikyrah
American By Birth
I was born in North Carolina and I grew up three miles away from the hospital I was born in. After I grew up and got married we bought a house around the corner from that same hospital. I’m not an adventurous soul obviously. My grandmother was born in 1900; she said her grandfather fought in the civil war. She had a picture of some man on a horse wearing a Confederate uniform. Sometimes to hear her talk the war had just been fought. I was born in 1955 and I heard many stories about the glorious south.
……………………..
Now I’m going to tell you the ugly side of the south, there were people who acted almost giddy when this good man was murdered. (MLK) They could barely hide their glee. I heard comments about how it served him right being so pushy and thinking he was a good as white people. Yes this is what was said fifty years ago. I remember interracial couples being victimized and treated shamefully. I remember their children being called half-breeds. One of the most telling photographs from the period was taken in Charlotte North Carolina and one black girl was going to go to a white high school. The picture shows her being escorted by the police and the white kids around her were screaming at her, spitting on her and shaking their fists. Here was this girl maybe fifteen years old all alone, she stood tall and held her head up while the kids around her did their worst to make her feel afraid, their faces twisted with hate.
…………………..
I don’t know why most southern states are conservative politically because God knows the Republican Party hasn’t done shit for the middle class or poor. For some reason these same people think if you’re a Democrat you get free stuff, so far that hasn’t happened for me. I’m a Democrat because I refuse to be affiliated with a party that lets idiots run for President. For some reason racism was becoming hidden so well you could almost forget it. Then something happened that gave racism a whole new lease on life. A black man ran for President then damn if he didn’t win.
Believe me when I say our racism got all up in your face when that happened. People who I thought were evolved were blurting out the “N word” like all of a sudden that shit was okay. That Confederate flag was flying high and proud in front of single-wides and shacks everywhere along with the Romney/Ryan campaign signs. Of course the signs should have come down but I guess they were afraid the Confederate flag wasn’t enough to show their displeasure at the election results.
I also want to tell you people out there who think it’s really witty to spell the President’s name wrong like Obummer or some such shit as that, it’s not funny, it’s sad. Also any of you who refer to him as the Liar in Chief, the irony must make your assholes pucker up after the eight years of the Bush Presidency. This is the crux of the whole thing; this is what racism is, the lowest, most uneducated, toothless, inbred, southern white man still believes that his white skin makes him better than the President. Until we can get around that, racism will always be with us.
Paul in KY
@SFAW: I’ve had nice dreams of murdering him. Well, in my dream, it was more an execution after a trial, but whatever…
Felonius Monk
@Frankensteinbeck:
He’s just a cranky old turd and that has great appeal to the typical Fox audience, most of whom are cranky old turds themselves.
OzarkHillbilly
@Paul in KY: I rather suspect a few would. Enough to make a difference? I suspect it depends on which state. Either way, I’m not a political scientist so I can only answer with a definite maybe.
Tim C.
@amk: Truth, truth… truth.
kc
I’m glad we can all unite and hate on that arrogant motherfucker Bloomberg.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: A whole lot of these idjits are single issue voters. Think voting the ‘Pro-Life’ candidate will get them bennies in heaven. Others lurv the guns, they have 23, and are convinced the Democrat will take em all.
I wish there was a way we could figure out how to pry some of these useful idiots away from the Mammon Party.
Paul in KY
@kc: I agree with this post wholeheartedly!!
OzarkHillbilly
@kc: @Paul in KY: Yep yep yep yeppers…
Brachiator
@Mike J:
I thought that Hindenburg crashed and burned.
Patricia Kayden
The good thing is that Bloomberg has money to burn and time to waste in a futile Presidential campaign. The bad thing is that we would be subjected to his blathering through November.
Why doesn’t he find some other way to spend his money and time like traveling or hanging out with his family and friends? Why are so many Americans deluded about their qualifications to run for the most powerful office in the world? Perhaps Skrelli should throw his hat into the ring as well.
Germy
Speaking of horror, I see that John McCain is on FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. tonight.
Face
@MattF: Just curious — why would this be a big deal? Havent the existence of grav waves been known for a while? So is it the mere confirmation of their existence a big deal, or did they also discover something else even more shocking?
This reminds me of the Physics World chubby after the detection of Higgs, something we’ve pretty much known existed for some time. Detection was nice, but it didn’t exactly reveal anything we didn’t already very strongly suspect…
Germy
@Patricia Kayden: Skrelli would get 27% of the vote.
Applejinx
@Paul in KY: Here’s an amusing moment from the Keene Bernie Sanders office: might even have worked, who knows.
One of our volunteers went and got a box of donuts. He then proceeded to go to the Trump office, and anybody bringing donuts tends to get in. And then he gave the Trump people free donuts… and THEN, he introduced himself and said he was volunteering for the Bernie Sanders campaign, and went on his way, and he’s in our office right now.
We aren’t lacking in food so it’s no biggie… but I propose this be named the Donut Strategem :)
Jay C
@OzarkHillbilly:
True enough, but Mayor Mike got his three terms though a series of political circumstances which are probably unique to New York (City):
1. He was running against tepid Democratic Machine hacks.
2. He had little/no association, either personally or politically, with the right-wing “social agenda” (i.e. prejudice-based)
policies that run Republican campaigns in other places.
3. He pretty much outright bought the elections: his campaign spending saturated the (expensive) New York
media market with ads way beyond anything his opponents could finance.
Oh, and 4. Bloomberg rammed though a repeal of NYC’s term-limits law: hence the third win….
Not sure these factors would carry over into an “independent” national campaign…..
El Caganer
@Germy: Yeah, but then he’d immediately demand 98%.
Jay C
@Brachiator:
Yep: turned out to be just a big gasbag after all…..
Frankensteinbeck
@Face:
‘Strongly suspect’ is veeeeeery different from ‘know’ in the physics world, especially the quantum physics world. There’s this tendency for stuff we ‘strongly suspect’ to turn out to be wrong, and then the shit hits the fan. Advanced physics is built on a tower of ‘probably’s stacked on ‘probably’s, so every confirmation is a big deal.
Roger Moore
@Face:
They’ve been theorized about, but nobody has actually observed one before. While nobody seriously doubts the big picture of general relativity, there are some questions about things like black holes that push the boundaries of the theory. So finding experimental confirmation for a longstanding prediction like gravity waves would give our existing ideas about gravity a boost. If we keep failing to find gravity waves with instruments that GR says ought to be able to find them, we have to start questioning if GR needs some extra refinements.
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: Well, doughnut bribery is a tried & true political tactic!
mclaren
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Ludicrous. Bloomberg’s candidacy will go nowhere. As others have pointed out, he’s a political non-entity anywhere except New York. Not only will Bloomberg not split the Democratic vote, his candidacy won’t even be noticed. This is not Ralph Nader, this is Harold Stassen. A non-issue in the 2016 presidential race.
Hal
@Jay C:
With support from Christine Quinn, who would be mayor if she hadn’t sided with Bloomberg in repealing the term limit law.
Also, with Giuliani and now Bloomberg, NYC mayors as of recent seem to think everyone else in the country will gravitate toward them simply because once were the mayor of NYC. Bloomberg isn’t going to fair any better than Giuliani. My guess is he hurts Republicans far more than Dems. He is certainly no Bernie Sanders.
jl
Any evidence that a Bloomberg vanity run will disappear without a trace, like a ship launched with no bottom, is a good news, as far as I am concerned.
Eric U.
Nobody has ever heard of Bloomberg, except fox news viewers. There are probably more offenses that they know about, but the attempted ban on super-sized drinks will mean he takes zero voters from that side. He’s the poster child for the nanny state for them. Oh, yeah, and gun control
Applejinx
@Paul in KY: I love that it was the Trump headquarters he went to. I’m not the only one thinking that peeling off Trump voters for Bernie is a smart tactic.
TallPete
OT, but you’ll like this Full Frontal on Bush-mentum happening – or not – in NH.
MattF
@Face: It’s true that there’s already considerable indirect evidence for gravitational radiation. It’s been observed that gravitational orbits of sufficiently small and sufficiently massive bodies decay– and it’s reasonable to conjecture that the energy radiates away in gravitational waves.
But actually observing them is a different matter. First, from a technical point of view, it would be a spectacular measurement. You’re measuring displacements that are a small fraction of the diameter of a proton.
Second, the concept– propagating waves in the fabric of space-time– makes the small hairs on the back of one’s neck stand on end. In that vein, there’s also the ‘Einstein was right. Again.’ theme.
Finally, for large distances, gravitation is the force that matters. One is just happier to understand it better.
Tim C.
@Hal: Under what scenario? I’m not disagreeing, and I will stipulate this year has been very different than any other in memory on the GOP side. But if Trump or Cruz is the nominee, in that scenario do you see Bloomberg peeling off votes? What if the nominee is an “establishment” candidate?
jl
And I need some good news (Bloomberg is going with a team that may ensure hie complete irrelevance). I read in the Krugman blog that Kasich is a crypto-gold bug who thinks all our macroeconomic problems are because interest rates have been kept too low since Great Recession.
So, cancel all I have said about Kasich being least disastrous (though still disastrous) in the limited sense that he will be disastrous only in ways that he intends to be disastrous.
I will also studiously avoid reading DeLong on dysfunctional and disastrous socio-political OODA loops.
Edit: each in their own special way, every person in the GOP field is a walking catastrophe waiting to happen. Trump may be least disastrous, if you go on the theory that he really has no ideology at all, and just jumped on the GOP train to get his yooge and classy, completely terrific prez political career going, since he looked and saw that complete idiots can do very well going that route. Not the best straw to lean on (intentional mixed metaphor alert. Or is it? I think I have fallen into a Rubiobot panic loop)
Paul in KY
@Hal: President Al Smith could tell them all about how mayor of NYC leads ya right into the Oval Office.
schrodinger's cat
Is Bloomberg shorter than Hillary?
Iowa Old Lady
If you want amusement, Digby has clips of the Samantha Bee show that are pretty funny.
Matt McIrvin
@Face: The most important thing is that it gives astronomers another tool in their toolkit for observing phenomena far away. There’s optical astronomy, infrared and UV astronomy, gamma-ray astronomy, etc., and now there can be gravitational-wave astronomy. The existence of gravitational waves was never really in doubt, but unlike the Higgs particle, you can actually do something with them.
trollhattan
@Cacti:
The “pop” and “co-cola” cohorts take great umbrage at this obvious attempt to cleave the American electorate asunder.
Felonius Monk
@mclaren: He doesn’t even come close to Harold Stassen. It always seemed to me that Stassen had a sense of humor and was pretty good natured especially after so many attempts for the nomination. These are traits Bloomberg does not appear to have.
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: Would say that the new voters Trump brings in are probably less ideologically wedded to standard GOP stuff. They are all about Teh Donald, though.
trollhattan
@Iowa Old Lady:
OMG, she really brought it. Am very glad it’s a weekly show ala John Oliver (nightly waters down the ability to do long-form) and that she seems to have very few constraints within the “basic cable” environment. She was the best TDS correspondent and it’s already showing with the new show. Also, too, no desk and no “interviews.”
Current TDS crew: take note.
Brachiator
@OzarkHillbilly:
New York mayors don’t become president.
Ask President Rudy Giuliani or President John Lindsay.
catclub
@MattF:
you didn’t say earthshaking ;)
Frankensteinbeck
@Paul in KY:
They are all about Teh Racism. Trump voters are not crossover voters Bernie can get. It ain’t happening. This is another example of how when you examine their voting habits, the most partisan voters – especially on the GOP side – call themselves ‘independent.’ I think it’s healthy to try, but don’t fool yourself there are enough of them you can woo to even make a rounding error.
jl
@Felonius Monk: I think at one time, long long ago, Stassen was a moderate interenationalist GOPer. Opposed Dewey, worked in UN conference, and at least once threw his support to Eisenhower.
Stassen could think and was reality-based. I don’t think any real points of comparison except his eventual descent into cartoonishly futile political runs.
Gene108
@Cacti:
To be fair, one reason Germany is as liberal as it is, is because the right-wingers made things sooooo bad, in their 12 years of power, that the ones left alive after Nuremberg were not going to be given the time of say by the German people.
The Left just greatly underestimated how bad the German Right would make things before losing their hold on power.
Germy
I was under the impression that Bloomberg really hates mixing with the public. Doesn’t he threaten to run for president every four years, and then change his mind when he considers all the germy hands he’d have to shake? He’s too rare and delicate a flower to go out and eat corn dogs.
Iowa Old Lady
@trollhattan: I notice Trevor Noah starts TDS standing now, but the only thing I can see is that his suit is too small.
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: I think Sanders can only get very low info Trump voters who are more attracted by his more moderate and populist economic message and not mostly attracted by Trump bigotry and authoritarianism. Not sure how many of those there are.
Germy
@Frankensteinbeck:
Reminds me… did anyone witness the thrilling meltdown of srv last night? Epic.
schrodinger's cat
@Face: Experimental confirmation is necessary, physics is not economics, theories live and die by experimental confirmation.
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
Trump’s bigotry is front and center. It is the first thing anyone hears about him, not his populist economic message. He is loud and open and disgusting about his bigotry. Anybody who supports him, at the very least, considers that dismissable – a pretty hefty level of racism itself. Again, there are not many crossover voters there.
dmsilev
@catclub: Earth-shaking is kind of bad for LIGO. They go to absurd lengths to filter all that stuff out.
It’s space-time shaking that they care about…
Calouste
I can see Bloomberg joining the race if it looks like it’s going to be Sanders vs Cruz. He can distance himself well from both and could create space for himself in the middle. That won’t work as well if either Clinton or Trump are in the race, for various reasons, one of them is that they both are from New York as well.
schrodinger's cat
@Frankensteinbeck: I think you misunderstand how quantum mechanics works.
jl
@schrodinger’s cat:
” Is Bloomberg shorter than Hillary? ”
I hope he is the shortest person ever to run for president. That plus the wizened (Edit: maybe ‘withered’ is better) plutocrat effect, and him going with PR people who put out fey, inscrutable, totally forgettable BS political pitches may doom him to getting not one state, and not throwing any states to GOP.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: There’s no better way for the socialist campaign to ingratiate itself with the followers of a blowhard racist billionaire than showing up offering free stuff and then being smug about it!
Mai.naem.mobile
I don’t think Bloomberg is good for the Dems but I think you underestimate the number of votes he would pull from the GOP especially if their nominee is Cruz or Trump. And if the FBI thing does blow up in Hillary’s face, we may be happy to have Bloomberg.
ThresherK (GPad)
Bloomberg is hopefully a Pete Wilson redux.
Great Count Floyd title! Waiting for a Tex and Edna Boil Emporium next.
NR
Bloomberg knows he can’t win. The only reason he would run would be to take votes from Sanders and ensure that the Republican wins. He specifically wants to keep Sanders out. He’s said that the business interests will be well-represented with Hillary as the Democratic nominee.
catclub
@jl:
James K Polk, the Napoleon of the Stump. 5ft 4in
Davis X. Machina
Bloodless, non-crazy, non-God-bothering, goo-goo technocrat?
Perfect for northern Virginia…
catclub
@NR:
This implies that the billionaires insist on having at least two candidates on their side in the race.
It also shows an absolute ignorance of how laws get made with the divided congress that will exist in 2017.
sounds about right.
Monala
@Archon: Question about Obama campaigning for Sanders if he wins the nom: didn’t Obama say in his gun control speech that he wouldn’t support any candidate, even from his own party, unless they were willing to enact gun control measures?
Matt McIrvin
@Monala: If nominated, Sanders isn’t going to be any kind of gun-rights extremist. He just has a squishy history on the subject, compared to other Democrats. He might lose some pro-gun liberals, though, if he makes clearer statements.
Brachiator
@prob50:
I do it for the kicks.
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin: As someone else pointed out somewhere else recently, Pat Leahy, the Democratic senator from Vermont, has never been squishy on guns, so it’s not at all clear that gun-squishiness is de rigueur to get elected in Vermont, despite what the Bernie Sanders narrative has been (and before that when it was the Howard Dean narrative).
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: In spite of being the One True Progressive, Bernie has cast some remarkably conservative votes on immigration and guns, let’s not forget he also voted to audit the Fed.
Librarian
@Paul in KY: AL Smith was never mayor of NY. He was the governor of NY state.
Bill
A Bloomberg run has to either capture votes that otherwise wouldn’t be in the mix, or siphon off Dem votes. No Rep is voting for him once the “He wants to take your guns and soda” ads start running. And I don’t see Bloomberg as the type that taps in to a Trumpian wave of new participants in the political process.
Also, I think he’s said he will only run if Bernie gets the Dem nomination. That’s going to help the Rep’s with their base as well, once the surrogates start dog whistling “It’s either a good white Xian or one of those two New York Jews.”
NR
@schrodinger’s cat: Auditing the nation’s largest bank is a right-wing position now?
Archon
@Monala:
Bernie Sanders have basically flipped on all his previously held gun positions so it won’t be a problem.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: Um, obviously yes, being that it’s been a hobbyhorse of Ron Paul and the Paulite family for years and years and years?
schrodinger's cat
@NR: Its a Paulite position, that the Central bank and monetary policy are the root of all evil. Yes it is indeed the position taken on the kookiest of RW blogs.
PaulW
@NR:
There are questions that the auditing process would focus on the wrong questions about what the Reserve does and could set up Far Right conservatives to wreak more havoc on the economy than they already do.
PaulW
@catclub:
this is why our next President needs to be Watusi. Think of it, 8 FEET OF SOLID WATUSI! – Monty Python reference achievement unlocked
Peale
@NR: Yep. One the public knows that the vaults are empty, they’ll rally round the return to the gold standard and the real economy will finally return.
Peale
@Bill:
Huh. I think that’s Donald Trump or two Jews. You can’t actually Run against New York with Trump on the ticket and the good christian part is a stretch.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: How about arguing the position on its merits, instead of saying it’s bad because Paul wants it?
NR
@Peale: This is not a good argument. If the only thing that keeps the financial system working is lack of transparency, there is something wrong with the system.
Peale
@mclaren: If he weren’t so rich and didn’t run a company where reporters want to work, I’d believe you. He’ll be noticed and get fawning because he can hire reporters if he wants to. Otherwise, I’d agree. Vote For Bloomie would be the Vote For Buddy this cycle.
Peale
@Anoniminous: Caucuses are supposed to last, what, 6 hours? How crowded does he want them to be?
Bill
@Peale:
Tim C.
The problem with the “Audit the Fed” crew is that it’s a directy outgrowth of the John Birch type nonsense. It also is a way of sounding reasonable about something that is utterly deserving of ridicule: The idea that if we suddenly convert back to gold or other precious metal based currency somehow the magic pixie dust Laffer-Curve of FREEDUM will cause Ayn Rand to return to us and bless us all with freedom power of freedoming freedom.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, he has lost this pro-gun control liberal with his current stance, so maybe either way he goes, he loses. It’s one of the major reasons I won’t vote for him in the primary and, if he wins the primary, I won’t work on the campaign for the Democratic nominee for the first time since I was old enough to vote. I’ll vote for him, but on this (and some other things, like his not actually being a Democrat), he loses my primary vote and my free labor.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
More proof that rich people are out of touch egotistic assholes. Seriously, what sane, well informed person would look at the present race and think, “gee, what the nation is clamoring for is a rich Wall Street prick with vaguely liberal sensibilities.” Obviously that’s not where the Republicans are because they’re wingnut cray cray, and as for the Democrats, all the energy seems to be with Bernie so it doesn’t seem like a rich Wall Street prick is going to draw much of a constituency.
jefft452
@Mike J: “Hindenburg ran, and won, as an independent in 1932”
Hindenburg was a national hero who stopped the “Russian steamroller” at Tannenberg
Bloomberg is not and didnt
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: Definitely a lot of racists liking Der Trumpenfurhrer. Good point.
Paul in KY
@Librarian: My bad on that. Thanks for the correction.
He would have made a good mayor, but good times Jimmy Walker had that gig.
Paul in KY
@jefft452: I thought that was Von Mackenson who commanded at Tannenberg. Will have to Google it.
Paul in KY
@jefft452: I Googled. Von Mackensen commanded under Von Hindenberg at Tannenberg.