June 21, 2007

Picking a Blog Feud - Real Clear Politics

Hatched by Dafydd

John McIntyre of Real Clear Politics published a post today analyzing the fallout from the potential presidential campaign by former RINO, now IINO Michael Bloomberg, multibillionaire Mayor of New York City. His basic question was who would be hurt worse by such a run: Democrats or Republicans.

I agree with his broad conclusion -- that it hurts the former more in nearly all cases -- and disagree with his thought that under the circumstance of a Mitt Romney - John Edwards tussle, Bloomberg would hurt Romney more; but I'm mainly interested in one nugget that John tossed rather nonchalantly upon the table:

What makes this more intriguing is that the likelihood of Bloomberg getting in is inversely related to the strength of the eventual major-party nominees. A Romney-Edwards general election would be Bloomberg's best hope and in the unlikely event they are both the nominees I think a Bloomberg run becomes a near certainty, with a Bloomberg presidency a possibility.

If John means a Bloomberg win is a "possibility" in the narrowest logical sense -- for example, Bloomberg would win if uncontrovertible evidence emerged one week before the election that both Mr. Romney and Mr. Edwards were on Osama bin Laden's payroll as sleeper agents -- then I have no problem with this paragraph. But if, as I believe likely, John meant that there were reasonably plausible circumstances in which Bloomberg would win the race, then I think John is dreaming (a nightmare, I will assume).

There are only two ways to win the presidency (since Bloomberg won't be running as anyone's running mate):

  1. By amassing a majority of electoral votes;
  2. Or in the event that nobody does, by gaining an absolute majority (26) of state delegations in the House of Representatives.

(2) is politically impossible; no state delegation except perhaps New York would vote for the independent, as they are all controlled by either Democrats or Republicans (mostly Republicans), and Bloomberg does not have any national following anyway.

So let's concentrate on states that Bloomberg could plausibly win in the general election. First of all, he must win Republican states to win the presidency: Since the Republican won the last two presidential elections, Bloomberg cannot win with only Democratic states, not even if he gets all of them.

Second, Bloomberg will not get all of the Democratic states, because many of them (big states) are very liberal and will certainly vote for a liberal Democrat over a moderate whatchamacallit: California, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts alone account for 119 electoral votes, or 47% (!) of John Kerry's 252 votes; and they all went for the Democrat by more than ten points.

So the question reduces to this: How many Republican states can Bloomberg plausibly win? It must be quite a few, to make up for the liberal Democratic states he will assuredly lose. And here is the big problem: There were very few "purple" states in either 2000 or 2004. Defining a purple state as one where the spread between Bush and Kerry was 5% or less, Kerry took six purple states for 69 electoral votes, and Bush took another six for 73 electoral votes. Even if Bloomberg took them all -- itself very unlikely -- that's only 142 electoral votes, just slightly over half of what he would need.

In other words, to have any possibility of winning, Moderate Mike would have to take a number of conservative states away from the conservative Republican nominee and/or a number of liberal states away from the liberal Democratic nominee. How is that supposed to happen? Does Texas decide that Mitt Romney is too conservative, so they vote instead for that guy from New York City?

In the general election, I doubt that even New York state would vote for Bloomberg; though if he were very popular, he might split the Democratic vote there between himself and the actual nominee, handing the state to the Republicans (30% of the Democratic vote going to Bloomberg would do it, if the Republicans held their own). I doubt it would happen, however; New York liberals are not utter fools.

So respectfully, I think John's final, almost parenthetical comment -- that "a Bloomberg presidency [is] a possibility" -- is a load of peanut butter waffles.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 21, 2007, at the time of 4:14 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Fritz

I agree. I don't see any possibility of Bloomberg winning short of something so bizarre that it defies imagination. I would further add that anyone who thinks otherwise has had a few too many for the road in my opinion.

The above hissed in response by: Fritz [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 21, 2007 7:09 PM

The following hissed in response by: RBMN

I think just by entering the race, Bloomberg demonstrates that he's too disconnected from reality to be President. Catch-22.

The above hissed in response by: RBMN [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 21, 2007 10:45 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dan Kauffman

Just think how complicated things would get if Lieberman threw his hat into the ring.

The above hissed in response by: Dan Kauffman [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 22, 2007 1:02 AM

The following hissed in response by: watcher


Can't happen.

As you mentioned, to win the election, he would need to win several red states. Take that problem and compound it with the fact that the NRA will rightfully LOAD UP against him, and you see that he has a problem. The NRA can be very influential -- just ask Al Gore. And Bloomberg has gone out of his way to piss them off...

The above hissed in response by: watcher [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 22, 2007 7:43 AM

The following hissed in response by: Rovin

Does Texas decide that Mitt Romney is too conservative, so they vote instead for that guy from New York City?

Could help but notice this almost sounded like a picante sauce commercial.

It's still too early to sort things out----so for now I'll keep my support for Pat Paulson.

The above hissed in response by: Rovin [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 22, 2007 11:01 AM

The following hissed in response by: JenLArt

I can't imagine anyone voting for Nanny Bloomberg by choice outside of NYC.
Even the speculation that he might run and win strikes me as ludicrous!
The man is loathesome.
Not that there's anything wrong with that...

The above hissed in response by: JenLArt [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 22, 2007 11:36 AM

The following hissed in response by: Terrye

Never gonna happen.

The above hissed in response by: Terrye [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 22, 2007 3:24 PM

The following hissed in response by: Beldar

Does Texas decide that Mitt Romney is too conservative, so they vote instead for that guy from New York City?

The reason Texans wouldn't vote for Bloomberg is not because he's from New York, much less (and contra the rationale of folks like JPod) because he's Jewish or short.

If Giuliani turns out to be the GOP nominee, he'll carry Texas very easily. If he had Lieberman as his running mate (not that I'm proposing such a thing; Lieberman's a mensch on foreign affairs and national security, but still a lib on most domestic issues), that wouldn't cost him many votes.

It's because Bloomberg's a nanny-state liberal. (And a twit. But mostly the former.)

The above hissed in response by: Beldar [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 23, 2007 11:12 PM

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