Bloomberg’s confab hits a few snags

January 8, 2008

After generating a limited amount of interest — probably a small fraction of what organizers had hoped for — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg led a group discussion in Oklahoma yesterday with elders from the Democratic and Republican parties. The purpose of the forum, apparently, was to “denounce the extreme partisanship of Washington and plot how to influence the campaign.” Given the vague inanities of it all, dday labeled the confab, “Wankfest.”

So, how’d it go? It’s probably safe to assume Bloomberg ended the day disappointed.

[E]ven as the mayor gathered on Monday with the seasoned Washington hands on the campus of the University of Oklahoma, the surging presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama seemed to steal energy from the event and set off worry elsewhere among Mr. Bloomberg’s supporters.

Mr. Obama has stressed that he wants to move beyond gridlocked politics and usher in an era of national unity. A key organizer of the effort to draft Mr. Bloomberg for a presidential run acknowledged in an interview on Monday that that Mr. Obama’s rise could be problematic.

“Obama is trying to reach out to independent voters, and that clearly would be the constituency that Mike Bloomberg would go after,” said Andrew MacRae, who heads the Washington chapter of Draft Mike Bloomberg for President 2008. “An Obama victory does not make it impossible, but it certainly makes it more difficult.”

There’s been an implication that some of the high-profile participants who traveled to Oklahoma were at least open to bucking their party and supporting an independent Bloomberg candidacy. Yesterday, however, it became clear that this isn’t really the case at all.

[S]everal leading participants took pains to say that they had no intention of abandoning their own parties in the election. Some even cast Mr. Obama’s success as evidence that the nation was yearning for the type of leadership they were offering.

“I believe he is demonstrating, in the support he is getting, that the American people share this concern about excessive partisanship,” said Bob Graham, a Democratic former senator from Florida, who said he would support a Democrat for president.

Gary Hart, a Democrat from Colorado who also served in the Senate, said he intended to endorse one of the Democratic presidential candidates in the next 48 hours, though he declined to identify the candidate.

“I am a Democrat, and I will endorse a Democratic president,” he said. “There are no independent candidates. I won’t endorse a Republican.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman (R) has also been seeking to distance herself from any third-party bid by Bloomberg, saying, “While other attendees may assert their personal interest in a third party, I am a Republican and will remain one.”

What are we left with? An independent mayor who has repeatedly said he will not run, the complete absence of a policy agenda or rationale for an independent campaign, a Democratic candidate who’s already filling the void, and group participants who aren’t interested in a third-party initiative at all.

I don’t doubt that Bloomberg is going to continue to pursue some kind of candidacy, but it’s increasingly looking like a pointless exercise.

The two sides of the same coin want to make it a two-headed coin, huh?

  • Former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman (R) has also been seeking to distance herself from any third-party bid by Bloomberg, saying, “While other attendees may assert their personal interest in a third party, I am a Republican and will remain one.”

    I thought so.

    After all the Republican ratfucking she (finally) attested to, after all the shit they pulled in the Bush administration with regards to global warming and a host of other pollution issues, after all her fine rhetoric about the environment, she’s still backing the Republicans.

    Die, witch.

  • It’s never been about a ‘third party’ candidacy…. It’s merely another Republican disguised as an independent talking about change, just because Bloomberg and his supporters are ashamed of their old party.

    Talking about bipartisan ship…. I don’t think the Democrats in congress could be any more bipartisan by agreeing with the Obstructionist Party (Republicans)

  • “…she’s still backing the Republicans.”

    Yes, but the reason she was interested in the meeting was the exclusion of moderates from the Republican Party. While it might be a futile effort, such efforts by Republican moderates to oppose the extremism prevalent in the party is beneficial. It is unrealistic to expect that Republicans will simply abandon their party, and not necessarily even desirable. There are benefits to having a two party system and I would like to see moderate Republicans like Whitman be successful.

    All the talk about a possible run by Bloomberg has overshadowed the real reasons that many decided to attend the meeting.

  • At this stage, any D or R party “elders” (love that term) interested in reducing partisanship would do better to petition members of their respective parties. Good luck with that, by the way.

  • The whole “American people want bipartisanship not bickering” horse hockey is completely unsubstantiated by actual polling data. Bloomberg better get busy spending his billions to turn that around, simply blabbering it repeatedly isn’t working.

  • I found it hilarious that they wanted compromise on a host of issues that the Democrats have been trying to pass and that the Republicans have simply blocked, despite overwhelming support for the issues by the American people. Apparently what they’re saying is that there’s just not enough Americans who are willing to compromise with the Republican politicians.

  • Bloomberg is like Newt in that I think he wanted the people to proclaim him the candidate. He’s been a decent mayor (although I can’t forgive him for rounding up people during the Republican convention and holding them for days).

    One thing I’ll say for Hillary – she’s the only candidate out there who isn’t trying to be loved. The more I hear about Obama the more he sounds like Bill Clinton. I’m tired of charming men.

  • This seems to be at least the second abortive attempt of Bloomberg to create the buzz necessary to launch a third party presidential bid and his repeated failure pegs him as more of a loser than a leader. If he wants to run, announce it damn it and run. If hype is his lever of change, I have now lost any favorable opinion of Bloomberg.

    This has been the campaign season of the parachutist. Fred Thompson parachuted into the race after creating a buzz and lazily getting ready for the race he is timing to get out of now. Newt Gingrich tried to parachute in as Republican savior, but nobody cared so he’ll have to wait for a brokered convention to get a shot. Now Bloomberg is the latest to try to pull the ripcord, but he won’t because not enough people were looking. Bummer, looks like we’re just stuck with three really popular Democratic choices for change and more Republican same old sh*t.

  • What is Bloomberg up to? It’s like building a McDonald’s—across the street from a McDonald’s. He thinks he’ll draw more customers?

    All I can see in this stunt, if it continues, is a Nader-esque effort to draw votes away from the main effort. Votes that are clearly independent, bipartisan, and demonstrating an historical tendency to lean Democratic….

  • I don’t doubt that Bloomberg is going to continue to pursue some kind of candidacy, but it’s increasingly looking like a pointless exercise.

    I think it was always pointless. The time it might have mattered would have been 2004. We are 50 years closer to having a black or female President than we are to having a viable third party.

  • What “change” are you referring to, petorado?

    $500 billion to continue Dick’s Private Empire and to continue bankrupting the country? Indefinite occupation of Iraq and 130+ countries around the globe? Continuation of the perpetual “war on terra”? Continued usurpation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution? Micro-chipped national ID card? Increased executive power to declare martial law and use the National Guard as a police force within the United States? Arbitrarily spying on U.S. citizens?

    That is the kind of “change” that George Orwell would be proud of.

    But I guess any given candidate’s record is of little significance here in the “reality-based community” when a candidate is “really popular.”

  • I watched a segment on CNN this morning regarding Bloomberg that included much bloviation by Whitman. I am so with you RacerX. And since Obama is drawing favorable interest from Donkeys, ‘Phants and even human-animal hybrids, call me suspicious over Bloomberg’s professed concern over bipartisanship. Me thinks he likes what Shrub and Co. have accomplished (and Democrats have enabled) regarding the further entrenchment of the imperial presidency and is drawn like a fly to $hit with the prospect of the power that represents.

  • I think CB is mischaracterizing this event by calling it “Bloomberg’s confab.”

    He was a late invite to this event convened by “party elders,” and didn’t exactly seize the spotlight once there–and he rushed home to attend a wake for a Brooklyn firefighter killed in the line of duty last week. His suggestion that “maybe the conversation we want has already started” is certainly open to interpretation as a thumbs-up to Obama.

    And as Joe Conason wrote here, Bloomberg’s putative candidacy doesn’t have a clear political opening anyway. He’s way to the left even of Obama on a number of social issues (gay marriage comes immediately to mind) and his belief in a robust regulatory state. So where does he differentiate himself to Republicans? And would this liberal Jewish urban leader be willing to risk going down in history as The Guy Who Stopped Obama?

    I doubt it, but then I like Bloomberg and want to think well of him. That said, my interest in his candidacy was as, one, an alternative to the forever-cautious centrism and near-certain gridlock of a Hillary Clinton presidency; and two, his potential as a vehicle to enable strong progressive governance without being beholden to the more parochial and self-interested factions of the Democratic Party. With a loud and proud Democrat, Obama, giving hope of being able to do those things and lacking Bloomberg’s negatives (too pro-developers, past support for the Iraq War), it’s not a hard choice if things continue in their current direction.

  • I am not interested in the democratic party playing a game that goes like this ‘Who are you going to vote for, a black man, or a white woman’. I think this is a ploy to keep them from talking about the issues and also it’s going to be their kiss of death. I am a registered democrat and if they are going to continue to play this game then I’ll have to vote for Hillary being that I am a woman, but I don’t feel that any of this is helpful right now.
    I wish that Bloomberg would run as president because I would go all out to help him get elected. I trust Bloomberg, and I would feel secure with him being the president. He’s the only qualified guy out there that can steer this country in the right direction.

  • What are we left with? An independent mayor who has repeatedly said he will not run, the complete absence of a policy agenda or rationale for an independent campaign, a Democratic candidate who’s already filling the void, and group participants who aren’t interested in a third-party initiative at all.

    Don’t forget that along with that complete absence of a policy agenda, there’s criticizing the major-party candidates for supposedly having no “specifics,” despite the pages and pages they’ve published.

  • lynnzy – have you paid any attention to the campaign at all, or do you just get your opinions from pundits? “A ploy to keep them from talking about the issues”? They talk about the issues constantly, and have put out reams of detailed information on their campaign websites. If you perceive the entire campaign as being told to choose between a black man and a white woman, that’s your problem, not theirs.

  • Political parties and their candidates are what they always have been. George Washington said they are “self-created societies” which seek a special status in government for themselves. The reason the only independent candidates that exist are write-in candidates like me is because political party politicians have legislated exclusive ballot access laws for their party candidates at state level. For example, in Arizona, the state where I live, Barack Obama has to get about 4000 nomination petition signatures to get on the ballot. I would have to get more than 20,000 signatures. When independent candidates have contested these un-Constutional signature requirements in federal court, judges representing political parties have consistently ruled against independent voters, citing the phrase, “modicum of support”, from some early federal court case.
    So I will run as a write-in candidate. I am the only candidate for President with a plan for ending the Iraq war. If elected, I will go to Guantanamo, load the “prisoners of war” onto airplanes, explain to them that they are less a threat to the United States as enemy combatants than as foreign nationals being tortured by mentally ill Americans, and take them back where they came from. Then I would go to Iraq, order a stand down of all offensive military actions, and coordinate the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq with the Iraqi government.
    The President has the authority to do this because the last time Congress declared war was in 1941, and that declaration of war ended when the Japanese surrendered unconditionally on the battleship Missouri in 1945. So the United States is not officially at war with anyone at the present time. American troops should not be sent to fight in extended military engagements in foreign nations without a declaration of war.
    Undeclared wars are the bread and butter of political party politics. You people who want to vote for 100 years of war in the middle east, vote for a Democrat or Republican. Your kind of government comes from Europe. France and England used to have 100 year wars. The people of the United States need to take the government back from your “self-created societies”.

  • I continue to support Michael Bloomberg for president, and believe many are going to be stunned by his performance.

    Here is my take— It is rare that you find a presidential candidate that agrees with you on every single issue. But at the end of the day, the President is the executive manager of the world’s most powerful enterprise, the US government. I believe most voter’s underestimate the value of competence and management experience. What is most important to me is, do they have the competence and the experience to manage such an enterprise? Will they keep the economy strong? Will they make sound judgement in a crisis? Will they hire competent people, or just give valuable positions to unqualified individuals because they either have party connects or “owe” someone because of a campaign contribution?

    In our market driven society, the most talented among us rarely pursue positions in government, but rather fortune in the private sector. To get the best of what is available to us, I wish to see a seasoned executive manager from the private sector in the White House.

    This makes Mike Bloomberg the right man at the right time.

    His money buys him independence of a sort no other candidate can claim.

    He doesn’t look at decisions from an ideological point of view. As mayor of New York, he governs by results. If something works, it works, and it doesn’t mater if it comes from the left or the right. If it doesn’t work, get rid of it. It is his results driven business-like pragmatism that makes him a success.

    He is the only candidate guaranteed to keep the economy strong.

    When the economy is strong and everyone has a job, people tend to be less concerned about the differences among us. When the economy is bad, and people are unemployed, everyone looks for someone to point the finger at, and politicians look for divisive hot-button issues to distract their constituents from the real problems at hand.

    Truthfully, presidents rarely get to implement even a fraction of the so-called promises and policy positions they campaign on. A president’s term in office is most largely shaped by events of the day. And a president’s successes and failures in dealing with crisis that emerge define most president’s term in office more so that any specific piece of legislation that gets passed on their clock.

    So competent management skills, and a results driven, private sector mentality that brings competition and incentives to the executive branch of government is what Bloomberg brings to the table. Not a bunch of ideological baggage.

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