President Bloomberg?
Much of the chatter about the 2008 presidential race has focused this week on New York City Michael Bloomberg possibly mounting an independent run. Such a move is tantalizing for those who like to see chaos, because surely such a move would change the entire scene.I don't think Bloomberg has any chance of winning, mind you. An independent candidate, no matter how rich, has an uphill climb. State laws for getting on the ballot are byzantine. And even if on all 50 state ballots, that doesn't mean much. Ross Perot, who by all standards did amazingly well in 1992, with 19 percent of the vote, nevertheless failed to garner a single electoral vote. Furthermore, Bloomberg is a Jew from New York City. I don't think there's too many folks who will come out of the woodwork to vote for him.
No, it's what Bloomberg does to the other candidates that's interesting. Perot is certainly owed the credit for two terms of Bill Clinton. If it weren't for Perot's presence on the ballot, Clinton may have lost both races (he got less than fifty percent in both '92 and '96), and since Perot undoubtedly siphoned more Republican votes than Democratic, Clinton was the beneficiary. But it's unclear who Bloomberg will draw from. A lifelong Democrat, Bloomberg was elected to the mayoralty as a Republican. He is socially liberal and fiscally moderate-to-conservative. He is likely to draw from the middle.
More specifically, he's sure to hurt Rudy Giuliani. The Republican race is sure to be stirred when Fred Thompson officially declares. With Bloomberg hogging the spotlight, Giuliani may find himself struggling to get air-time on the evening news. If Giuliani is the nominee of the G.O.P., there will be an interesting struggle to separate the two men in the voters' minds. Giuliani would likely run to the right. If Hillary Clinton were the Democratic nominee, voters all across the country may stay home, dismayed that all their choices live within a short radius of Times Square.
Bloomberg was elected in 2001 for two main reasons: 9/11, and the horrible campaign of Mark Green, his Democratic opponent. He got off to a shaky start, but cruised to re-election four years later. Were I a New York resident, I may have had to violate a long-held resistance to voting Republican, because the Democratic, Fernando Ferrer, seemed to me to be another in a long line of widgets from the Democratic party machine. Bloomberg has run the city well, I think. He has taken some extreme positions, particularly on things like public smoking, that have rankled some, but he seems to not give a shit, which is kind of refreshing. Instead of consulting polls, he has his own mind. I would not vote for Bloomberg for President, because this election is likely to be close, and I don't want such a vote to backfire and land a Republican in office (like voters for Ralph Nader may have done in 2000). The first vote I ever cast in a presidential race was for an independent candidate, John Anderson in 1980, so I'm not philosophically opposed to third-party candidates.
Just a few days ago Bloomberg was interviewed on PBS along with the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa. The two both complimented and complemented each other, and if one didn't know better one could think they were running mates in a national ticket. I wouldn't be shocked to see that premonition come to fruition.
Perot is certainly owed the credit for two terms of Bill Clinton. If it weren't for Perot's presence on the ballot, Clinton may have lost both races (he got less than fifty percent in both '92 and '96), and since Perot undoubtedly siphoned more Republican votes than Democratic, Clinton was the beneficiary.
ReplyDeleteI'll look for a link, but I believe this has been pretty conclusively debunked. It's true that Clinton wasn't over 50%, but he was close enough that Perot voters would have had to break towards Bush overwhelmingly for Bush to have won had Perot not been present. And that just wasn't the case.
At any rate, it's not clear to me that Bloomberg would have much effect on the race at all if he entered. I'm not altogether sure who his constituency in a Presidential election is supposed to be - the combination of economically conservative and socially liberal just isn't very popular here. Or anywhere, really.
I dunno, you might be right, but who was Perot's constituency? I think there are voters who respond to plain-talking billionaires. And socially liberal, economically conservatives folks are legion in the Northeast, and there's probably some in California, too, which would hurt a Democratic nominee. I think Bloomberg could have an impact if the two other nominees are not embraced enthusiastically by their parties (like a Clinton-Giulani or Clinton-McCain). I'm reading that a lot of Republican voters don't like any of the current candidates on their side.
ReplyDeleteWhoever Perot's constituency was, I doubt it'd look anything like Bloomberg's. My recollection is that he combined an old-style populism (we're losing jobs, no to NAFTA, etc) with a lot of talk about smart government (balanced budgets, wasteful spending, etc). The second part sounds like Bloomberg, but then again, that rhetoric has been taken up by just about all candidates in both parties.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, 2008 will be interesting to watch. I think it will be the death knell for this current strain of wacko conservatism that we're dealing with, but who knows.
I'm not suggesting that Bloomberg will do as near as well as Perot, but given the electoral vote structure, a third-party candidate doesn't have to get too many votes to create mischief. Nader may have cost Gore Florida in 2000. And consider this: in 1976, Eugene McCarthy ran as a third-party candidate. He could not get on the ballot in New York state. Carter won New York by a razor-thin margin. It is not unreasonable to believe that if McCarthy had been on the ballot, he may have cost Carter the state and therefore the election.
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