So Bloomberg has declared independence from the GOP and changed his registration. Let’s assume that this means that he will run for President instead of what it probably really is (a desire to detach himself from a radioactive label that can only be damaging to his continued tenure in NYC). In that case, New Yorkers will get very excited about the prospect of having a presidential election version of a subway series. As with the actual subway series, the rest of the country groans at the thought of three New Yorkers running for President (Clinton is not really much more of a New Yorker than I am, but technically she is one). It is at times like this when New Yorkers are reminded that, as a general rule, the rest of us don’t like them very much and wish they would stop bothering us.
Fortunately, I don’t think this Five Boroughs three-way will happen. I will even say that neither major party will nominate a New Yorker for President. More than that, I will go so far as to say that I don’t think a Bloomberg ticket would get many votes at all, and certainly not enough to be competitive. What, after all, is the rationale for the man’s candidacy? Is it “I have to spend my money faster!”? Could it be, “We cannot allow that right-winger Obama in the Oval Office”? Honestly, I don’t see where Bloomberg gets real support from voters. He would appeal mainly to cultural liberals and moderate Republicans, most of whom are already going to be leaning towards the Democratic candidate in a big Democratic year. Their great fear is that supporting a third party candidate from the center-left or left could “Naderise” the ‘08 election and ensure a GOP victory, putting a Fred Thompson or Romney at the helm. That’s a sobering thought for all of us. A Giuliani nomination might actually help Bloomberg by making the GOP’s nominee so loathsome to its core constituencies and everyone else that they would almost have no choice but to throw their support behind the independent, but Giuliani will not be the nominee. The lesson is this: New York and New Yorkers are not nearly as relevant or as interesting as the folks there would like to believe.
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
June 20th, 2007 at 8:26 am
A.K.B. Cusack
It has always somewhat boggled my mind that Mr. Bloomberg thinks he can be president, but then it does seem vaguely possible. He has not been a great mayor, but is nonetheless fairly competent and much better than the alternative of the radical left (don’t forget, this place is so nuts we have major politicians who consider Robert Mugabe a hero).
And Mr. Bloomberg has, up to this point, not shown any inclination of trying to invade or annex other far-off municipalities citing our obvious obligation to intervene. The ideal presidential candidate who has no foreign policy, or rather whose foreign policy is the lack of a foreign policy and Bloomberg doesn’t seem to have one. Nonetheless, it would be exceptionally naive of me to assume he wouldn’t develop one.
But if Americans are faced with two run-of-the-mill war-mongering candidates, one in cahoots with the radical left and the other desperately hoping to arouse an increasingly unconvinced conservative base, it just might be possible for a somewhat uncontroversial non-party candidate to slip in and make it a proper three-way race. And a serious three-way race could be anyone’s guess, since the percentage of votes needed to win a state’s electoral votes is much lower.
In the Empire State alone, witness James Buckley’s successful Conservative Party defeat of both the GOP and Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate way back when, or more recently NYU professor Herb London nearly defeating the GOP gubernatorial candidate for second place in the 1990s (Under New York’s bizarre electoral laws, if the Cons had beaten the GOP for second place, they would have made the official opposition of the State, despite not having a single seat in the state legislature).
June 20th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Roach
Let’s have a reality check here. Bloomberg is Jewish and his foreign policy will be, if nothing else, very pro-Israel. This means continuing to remain involved in and to antagonize people who are basically harmless and useless so long as we’re not in their face. This is the heart of our Mideast dilemma . . . that and over-idealistic attempts to democratize the place, that is.
In addition, this guy’s personality sucks and no one will vote for him outside of NY. Pushy New Yorkers don’t realize how annoying they are to the rest of humanity.