Mike Bloomberg tried to rattle the "Establishment" cage when he held his indie summit in Oklahoma, but the results in New Hampshire might provide him with a powerful incentive to sit out 2008. The center is getting more crowded than the Obama press bus.
Bloomberg believes Americans are tired of the sharp partisan divide in both parties. Fair enough, but isn't he fighting the last war -- 2004?
Like Hillary, Bloomberg's hurt by the "change" tsunami, not because he doesn't embody change, but because others have successfully appropriated the slogan before he got the chance to spend his $1 billion telling the fine people of California and Florida that he practically invented the word.
More ominously, the two ascendant candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain...
Glenn Thrush
....are as popular among New Hampshire independents (McCain less so) as they are with members of their own parties. The key metric for Bloomberg to watch is turnout: if indies are fired up for Obama and McCain how does he make the case that America needs him as the third man in?
On first glance, an Obama-McCain general election (we are getting wildly ahead of ourselves, of course) seems to elbow Bloomberg out of the middle. McCain is a natural centrist; Obama is a traditional progressive but there are more similarities between the two than people realize.They both have a legitimate stake on the "change" banner (Obama more so), both favor rigorous campaign finance reform, both like transparency and government reform (Obama less so), both support progressive immigration policies (although McCain is backing off) and have called for an end to old partisan bickering over hot-button issues like abortion.
Sound familiar? Like a Bloomberg-for-President platform?
The most divisive issue, Obama-McCainwise, is the war, but that's been muted by the success of the surge. The fight over Iraq is likely to flare-up in the general election but where does Bloomberg fit in that dynamic?
He's been as silent on the war as any major political figure in the country (although he's attended the funerals of soldiers from the city), refusing even to comment on the war during the GOP's '04 convention, telling me it wasn't "a local issue." How will he explain that dodge in a three-way debate with an anti-war crusader and a former POW?
Other match-ups are more favorable for Bloomberg, particularly any scenario involving Clinton, Romney or Huckabee. (The rumor is that he'd never run against Rudy).
Comments (1)
I think this article needs more parentheticals (the more, the better!).