Will It Be Bloomberg And Unity In Independent Bid?
Hold your political calculations. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is going to meet with the bipartisan group Unity and there’s a possibility that they could join forces in a third party bid.
There have been stories plus speculation in informed political circles that Bloomberg could still jump into the race — and now the Washington Post’s David Broder reports this:
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a potential independent candidate for president, has scheduled a meeting next week with a dozen leading Democrats and Republicans, who will join him in challenging the major-party contenders to spell out their plans for forming a “government of national unity” to end the gridlock in Washington.
Those who will be at the Jan. 7 session at the University of Oklahoma say that if the likely nominees of the two parties do not pledge to “go beyond tokenism” in building an administration that seeks national consensus, they will be prepared to back Bloomberg or someone else in a third-party campaign for president.
Of course, miracles do sometimes happen in politics. And it is not entirely unlikely that one of the two major political party candidates will would want to try and short-circuit a potentially vote-siphoning third party bid involving (a) a group of highly dedicated, high-profile bipartisan politicians, officials and young activists (b) a billionaire businessman-mayor who has made it clear that he could wind up spending a record-breaking amount of his own considerable bankroll on winning the White House if he does decide to jump in.
But both political parties and many of their partisans now are deeply-locked into polarization patterns (which motivate activists to gather and work for candidates and get the party faithful to vote). So it’s likely that if Unity wants to put up a slate and Bloomberg feels its winnable and wants to jump in, 2008 could see a well-funded, high-profile third party bid.
Those attending the upcoming meeting are impressive, indeed:
Conveners of the meeting include such prominent Democrats as former senators Sam Nunn (Ga.), Charles S. Robb (Va.) and David L. Boren (Okla.), and former presidential candidate Gary Hart. Republican organizers include Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.), former party chairman Bill Brock, former senator John Danforth (Mo.) and former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman.
Boren, who will host the meeting at the university, where he is president, said: “It is not a gathering to urge any one person to run for president or to say there necessarily ought to be an independent option. But if we don’t see a refocusing of the campaign on a bipartisan approach, I would feel I would want to encourage an independent candidacy.”
Fair enough. But if Bloomberg decides to jump in and if they survey the other possibilities, it’s hard to see how he won’t be at the top of the list. Additionally, Bloomberg’s big bucks can buy him boatloads of advertising and TV time but if he decided to run and worked with Unity he’d ALSO have an already-in-place core of dedicated, experienced politicians and volunteers enthusiastically out there working the campaign.
All of this does mean that in this bronco ride of an election year, the wild cards we’ve seen (the rise of Huckabee, the Clinton campaign problems, the murder in Pakistan) are most assuredly going to be joined by a few more. And all analyses that state what’s “likely” to happen in a race involving two candidates could be seriously flawed.
Because if Unity launches, there will be an electoral impact — and if it joins forces with a Mayor who has proven to be a skilled politico and has deep pockets it will be an election with a huge deck of wild cards.
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16 Responses to “Will It Be Bloomberg And Unity In Independent Bid?”
These leaders obviously sense both the need and the national mood which I identified in this post, Joe: http://themoderatevoice.com/politics/mick-huckabee/16213/looking-for-grown-ups-to-send-to-washington/
Mark
[...] (Hat tip to the folks at Moderate Voice) [...]
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I think it would be great of Bloomberg ran and if Obama doesn’t get the Democratic nomination, then I would most likely vote for Bloomberg.
Forget Hillary (for me, anyway). At one time I would have voted for her. I forgave her Iraqi war resolution vote of a few years ago and accepted her explanation but since her Iran vote I’ve come to realize that she’s only saying stuff to please the “base” but doesn’t really intend on changing anything in Iraq. The other reason I’m not voting for her is that she is a very polarizing figure.
Obama is less polarizing than Hillary and we know where he stands with regards to the Iraq war (and other issues). I’ve posted before that I would love to see an Obama/Bloomberg ticket- but that wouldn’t be likely- Bloomberg is an independent and the Dem leaders wouldn’t support it (and if Bloomberg were to switch to the Dem Party the Republicans would have a field day with his flip flopping- first a Dem, then a Rep. then an Independent then a Dem). Plus I really don’t think Bloomberg would want the VP postion. Though if Obama promised to keep all the powers of the VP that Cheney subverted from others for himself, then maybe Bloomberg would find the VP office attractive.
All a Bloomberg third party run would do is give the Democrats a 50 state rout of the Republicans and give the Democrats more than 60 seats in the Senate.
Of course, those two election results makes the Republican Party irrelevant to politics and makes the U.S. a De facto one party state but I assume that is really want is intended with a Bloomberg candidacy.
This may just be the moment we’ve all been waiting for. If anybody can make a unified centrist movement happen, it’s these guys. Let’s finally get it done!
When is the last time David Broder was right about anything?
I would prefer if these Centrist leaders organized to focus on electing Centrists to Congress – Those who would be highly concerned about improving and reforming the process of collaboration and elections.
oh please, can’t we also include Lieberman is this? This is about ego and not about governance and leadership. Broder is an old fool who knows very little about the pulse of the nation.
The idea of this plan is to do a more successful version of what Nader accomplished in 2000, isn’t it? That’s certainly the only result I see. The Republicans like Pete Abel, who would consider not voting Republican if their candidate was basically a George Bush clone, are a distinct minority so I’d see a strong bid from Unity basically throwing the election to the Republicans no matter who their candidate was.
Bloomberg = anti-gun junk lawsuits = DQ by honest, decent Americans.
Broder = typical DC-sclerotic detritus. Yuck. I can’t wait for him to be extra scummy toward Huckabee.
Unity smacks of status-quo elitism. Maybe they are afraid of Huckabee (who eventually may be the VP selection at most) — and the American people.
Unity gives away its real agenda by its total lack of taking on very partisan black or Hsipanic politicians. It seems that Unity wants all whites to by moderates while tolerating rapid extremist of groups like the Congressionnal Black Caucus. Instead of running a pointless third party candidate for President, why not raise funds to find moderate blacks to run against Maxine Waters or moderate Republicans to run against the Tom Delay’s of the world.
[...] we ran THIS POST which noted Bloomberg’s upcoming meeting with Unity 08, high-powered bipartisan group that is [...]
Unity = business-as-usual-in-oversized-Washington-managed-by-
less-threatening-elites.
It’s the ultimate “don’t rock the oversized boat” in Washington nonsense. Big government? Not to be questioned, even though Americans always have questioned and better Americans have routinely opposed and rejected the arrogant assumption that the solution to all problems lies in Washington and that Washington should continue to grow ever larger.
Unity and its “nice, safe” elitism reminds me of a Washington-insider effort in the 1980s that was one of a number of studies on constitutional reform, that is, revising our constitution and our form of government. These elites cluck-clucked that the problem in Washington was “divided government” (which is to say, they were upset that there was a Republican in the White House who was not in lockstep with or a rubber stamp of a Democratic Congress). Their solutions included, naturally, fusion of powers, and extended down to the kind of thing elites would be prone to dislike; they would have banned “ticket splitting” and even required voters to vote a “team ticket,” that is, cast a vote for all Democratic candidates or all Republican candidates.
That’s what Unity smacks of, though it wants to see “nicer, safer” GOP big-government Republicans effectively form a single party with non-radical Democrats.
The Congressional Black Caucus are a bunch of losers and are irrelevant. I wouldn’t included them in anything. Actually they need to be dissolved. America’s issues are black folks issues and vice versa. Enough is enough.