Joe Gets By With a Little Help from His Friends
Joe Lieberman’s friends are helping him out. More specifically Mayor of New York Michael R. Bloomberg.
In his battle for re-election to the United States Senate without the backing of the Democratic Party, Joseph I. Lieberman is deploying a secret weapon in the race’s closing days: a sophisticated operation to identify and turn out voters, courtesy of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.The Bloomberg group includes several top-level operatives who played key roles in the mayor’s decisive re-election last year or who are in the administration, and have taken leaves from their jobs to work on Mr. Lieberman’s campaign.
Since Mr. Lieberman lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut to Ned Lamont, they have helped open campaign offices, devised a strategy to reach voters and are corralling enough volunteers to cover 2,800 shifts at more than 700 polling sites on Election Day, Nov. 7.
More:
With his 2005 re-election campaign behind him, Mr. Bloomberg has been relishing his role as kingmaker, endorsing Gov. Rod Blagojevich in Illinois and Gov. M. Jodi Rell in Connecticut, raising money for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in California and appearing in a television commercial for Representative Christopher Shays in Connecticut. (Mr. Blagojevich is a Democrat, and the others are Republicans.But his work for Mr. Lieberman, which includes substantial fund-raising and Mr. Bloomberg’s first out-of-state stumping in addition to the gift of manpower, marks his most intense and direct engagement in someone else’s political bid. It may not only broaden his image of nonpartisan, influence-free pragmatism, but it could also test how well his political machine can function in an independent campaign with national repercussions.
Bloomberg is quite a fascinating character. One would almost start to think that he is setting himself up for something bigger than mayor of New York.
opinions powered by SendLove.to
13 Responses to “Joe Gets By With a Little Help from His Friends”
If candidates, who feel that they are not in need of their parties support for re-election, begin to endorse candidates from independent parties and even go across party lines we will see a shift to the middle. I have thought that a one way to forming a third party would be for more moderate official of both parties take the chance at ticking off their traditional party supporters and start endorsing people regardless of affiliation. As the parties shift to the extremes the moderates feel disenfranchised anyway, so it is not a big leap for them to abandon the party apparatus that has already abandoned them and strike out on their own. The national party can’t do much about the “problem� it’s not like they can fire the independent from the party, and any support they might withhold from the candidate might not be needed anyway. This informal system of endorsements across party lines could become an independent party if the independent politicians decide to take the leap and go from endorsements to creating an independent party.
Well said Grognard and that is how I feel.
Thanks Rambie, appreciated
Which party would a moderate like Bloomberg take votes from?
Would he take them from the more extreme party, or would he take them from the more moderate party?
BYG, good question. I think that there are a lot of moderate Republicans who feel they have been pushed to the side by the extremeists with the RINO talk. I have noticed that some of the Democrats are taking a more middle ground in some states, so there might be a shift in more liberal areas, like the northeast, for moderate Dems, but not much of a change elsewhere.
Bloomberg’s efforts could be the seed of a professional Centrist movement. Imagine if candidates could get enough organizational and financial support without having to pander to the extreme ideologues in their party. Wow!
There are Centrists in both(all) parties. Those are folks more driven by “means” rather than ideological “ends.”
The Democrats have the DLC and Blue Dogs. The Republicans have the Republican Main Street Partnership and It’s My Party too.
Great comments Grognard and Austin.
Bloomberg could very well be working on something like that. Or at least, perhaps, a more moderate movement: a ‘relationship’ between moderates from both parties.
That could evolve into amoderate party, but it does not have to.
Thanks for comment Michael. Paul in Austin, do you think these groups have or will talk to each other? It seems that taking that step over the party line is difficult for them even though they have a lot in common. Conversation between these groups might also be the first step to a moderate party.
It seems to me that a third party is a cure that is potentially worse than the disease.
Our country is already pretty closely divided–50-50. The problem I see is that the winner takes all and doesn’t have to care for the opinions and values of the other side. The side that gets 51% doesn’t have to compromise. They don’t have to care about consensus. If they want war, torture, to chip away at science or habeus corpus, there are no checks on them. What they’ve really got to do, though, is hold onto that 51% at any cost. Any, any, any cost.
I think that’s what we’ve seen the past few elections. Anyone with an am radio can listen to–putting it mildly!–endless lack of respect for poltical disagreement. Endless name calling: those who disagree with your side are obviously stupid, evil and life-threateningly dangerous
So imagine if there were a successful third party, it would–or at least could–mean the country was split into thirds instead of halves.
And that could mean we’d be ruled by people who just had to hold onto 34% of the vote at ANY cost. Imagine how much more extreme a party that ruled with just 34% could be than a party that had to get 51%!
There are also more practical problems. The first few elections, third party candidates are almost certainly going to lose. In losing, they’re going to take away votes from somebody who might have won with those votes. Isn’t that what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore? What Ross Perot did to Bush-41? Lots of people who vote Republican claim to be Libertarians. But they won’t migrate to the actual Libertarian Party because they’re afraid that Democrats would win the elections. (Maybe these days they’re more afraid of Republicans!)
Also, successful parties don’t just run candidates for President. They run a full slate of candidates: Governor, State Senator, County Legislator, City Councilor, Town Supervisor, School Board Member–Dogcatcher! In having a wide array of officeholders, they have structural support.
There are already third parties, like the Libertarians. There have been third parties throughout American history. Sometimes they have good ideas like Social Security. Sometimes they have bad ideas like Prohibition. But they’re out there, standing on principle, pushing forth fresh ideas–they’re just not going to win. It’s the desire to win, and by winning to get some of your agenda through, that holds the disparate elements of our major parties togeather.
I hate to rain on anyone’s parade. I’d also like a pony, a winning lottery ticket–and a political party that closely represented my values. But there are good reasons why we’ve historically been a two-party country.
So, sorry, but I’m not seeing the practical logic behind a third party.
BYG, very good points. It could be that if moderate groups like you outlined start to go past party boundaries they can get more moderates nominated for office. They can also forge ties between moderates across party line. This might be more the form of a movement rather than an independent party with all the trappings. It also depends on how the elections are formatted, if you had a system that the winner had to take over 50% of the vote it would be likely that you would have a runoff election between moderate and an extremist.
What about a moderate organization that rates candidates from both parties on the extremity of their stands or voting patterns on various issues?
It could be simply done via the internet.
I have to say that I had given up hope on the Democratic stands being hopelessly liberal —but the new crop is very exciting- Ford, Webb, McCaskill, Mahoney, Lamont—these are not your father’s Democrats. Many have a mixture of moderate and even conservative viewpoints, two are entrepreneurs- which is good for the party’s notorious anti-business bent. I would like to see more of this- the Democratic Party losing its “George McGovern” peacenik image and becoming a lot tougher and more realistic.
Kim, yes an excellent post, the Democratic party might be painted as hopelessly liberal but the reality is quite different.
Thanks, Grognard. I will say that the Democrats with a lot of seniority in the House are fairly liberal—but not dangerously so—Rangel, Waxman, Pelosi,Conyers and Frank. There is a rising force, however, of moderate to conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats that will also have a lot of clout.
This gives me a lot of optimism about broadening the party’s appeal in future elections, and making it more relevant to voters. It needs to shed the peacenik image but also become a force for the working class again, and not be seen merely as the party of entitlements.
Even if the Dems fail to take over the Senate, larger numbers will give them more power if they can woo the moderate Republicans as they have done in the past. I can hardly wait for the election!!
Go Blue Dogs!