I think you’re right, and I think I’ve caught up with you now.
I agree with you that on paper an Obama/Bloomberg ticket – Democrat/Independent – could create a nice pool of November voters. I even started a GD thread raising the possibility a few months ago.
Bloomberg has the problems already mentioned though, plus one – not enough nation-wide name recognition, This, despite his efforts to raise his national profile during the time he was exoloring the possibility of running.
I disagree. Other than a few obvious exceptions like Clinton and Edwards, what possible VP candidate has bigger name recognition? Bloomberg is probably better known than Hagel or Richardson are for example.
It would be exactly the wrong idea, as with everything else Obama expresses along those lines, as I argued here.
Considering Richardson solely on race, would he drive away more people that would have voted for a (half) black man if he had a white running mate, or bring in more Latinos? It seems to me that while some people might, in fact, use that “too brown” line to justify not voting for the ticket, those people wouldn’t vote for Obama anyway, and would simply find some other justification for it.
I think the hysteria about a possible Obama assassination is overblown and misguided. Though probably many proponents of the fear are well-intentioned, it comes across as very paternalistic towards the black community. It reminds me of the constant warnings to women not to be alone at night: a good dose of caution is rightly due, but the warnings also serve to disseminate fear and keep people “in their place”.
Think about this: right now, we have the most disapproved-of president ever. And that’s just in the US. No assassination attempt, in seven years, has ever reached the public’s awareness.
There is a strong element in our society that wants to prevent black people from reaching power, but the frenzied assassination expectations are a counterproductive recognition of that.
Webb’s all over Parade today.
That’s not true. There was that Armenian who tried to kill Bush with a hand grenade while he was making a speech in Georgia in 2005.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s an assassination target for his race, but for his politics. If he’s targeted, it’ll because of his populist rhetoric, his let’s-work-together approach, and his end-the-strife objectives. Those divisions have proved to be exceptionally successful in terms of distracting the population and helping power centers to further concentrate their power; whether Obama is deliberately targeting them or not, they’ll still suffer if their smoke screens are blown away. Obama may be an abstract, vaguely existential threat to the white-race troglodytes, but he represents a very real threat to some very powerful people.
I don’t see how. His politics aren’t very far to the left at all, and ending strife is usually in the PTB’s interest.
Despite what Oliver Stone would have you believe, Fortune 500 executives do not have Presidents killed. It’s showy and it draws unwanted attention. These people have real power. If they don’t like a President, they just have him marginalized - let him retain office but take away his power. Do what Scaife did to Clinton. It’s only lone nuts and fringe groups that are so lacking in power that they’re reducing to getting a gun and shooting somebody.