Pressure Grows On Bloomberg: Make Up Your Mind, Already!from talking points by greg sargent 1/11/08
This has already gotten some attention, but we wanted to flag it anyway. Today's Times has a good piece on the backlash that's growing towards Mike Bloomberg's suggestions that he may run or may not run for President. We wanted to point you towards this priceless quote from Democratic strategist Robert Zimmerman, who is a Hillary supporter: “I think it is becoming a very old story very fast. Mike Bloomberg has failed to make a case that he represents an independent movement, as opposed to a former Democratic liberal, former Republican, former Bush-backer running a campaign of opportunism.” This really is the point. Bloomberg, who has criticized all the candidates for lacking policy specifics, has simply not said a darn thing that lets us place him in an ideological or policy sense. He is for "bipartisanship" in all its platitudinous glory, without telling us what policy ends he thinks should be accomplished with that bipartisanship. Which raises another point: Bloomberg's condemnation of "partisanship" needs to be seen as an electoral strategy, rather than a governmental one. That's what he used to get around the Democratic Party in New York, and it's what he would use to get around the parties should he run for President. As Zimmerman says, this is all about opportunism, pure and simple.
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1 comment:
Concerns about voter fatigue are overstated. The fact is, in Peoria, most people don't even know who the man is yet. Sure, we the chattering (blogging) class, have been whispering and hypothesizing about a potential Mike Bloomberg run for president for over a year, and in New York and in the political press, it has had peak and valleys of coverage for the past 6 months since he left the Republican party. But most voters don't read, watch or listen to any of that stuff. If he announces his candidacy, to most of the country he will still be brand new.
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