Bloomberg woud hurt the Dems more I think.
It could lead to a situation where there are two pro-choice candidates against one pro-lifer. Two gun control supporters against one NRA tool. Two anti-war candidates against one guy still thinking that invading Iraq was a good idea. Two gay rights supporters against one “family values” man. The Republican could win the election with way less than half the vote.
So do Bloomberg and Thompson now run media campaigns without actually officially running until they see if their numbers increase enough to make running officially really worthwhile?
Bloomberg has his own media group, effectively unlimited money and could do the talk show/interview circuit as both Mayor of NYC and self-made Billionaire to feel things out.
Is there any chance of him advancing enough in the polls to jump on the democratic ticket? The Dem leaders all have some major flaws for the general election that Bloomberg does not.
Jim
Thank you for saying this. Of all the bastardizations of political language, this is the one that pisses me off the most. To cut taxes, only to drive up deficits is the antithesis of fiscal conservatism.
Sua
“Fiscal discipline” is a more correct term for cutting taxes and spending, as it excludes the alternative option of raising both (obviously, spending as much as I want if I have the ability to take the money from some source is not “disciplined”, even if it can be considered “responsible” as long as I’m sure that the money can be taken as needed).
What I am reading is that Bloomberg will spend a billion dollars to have his say. His game is to have real political dialogue. If he wants to drop that kind of money to get his right to speak ,I am all for it. I do not know how he expects to get on the stage though.
I think the man honestly wants to be president, and honestly thinks he can win it. I don’t think the whole president bid is just a way for him to get the privilege of speaking.
He doesn’t have a billion dollars, does he?
Or does he?
He is worth around $5 billion from what I understand.
Check the CNN article today. He spent around $155 million to get elected Mayor twice.
Jim
:eek: . . . There is very definitely something very wrong with that, irrespective of the politics/character/abilities of the particular billionaires involved.
I dunno, the usual complaint involving campaign financing is that it makes the candidates beholden to the people that give them $$. Self-financing makes this issue moot.
Doubt there are very many folks that can afford to self-finance a major campaign though, even amongst the wealthy.
He may be able to buy his way into the race, but he can’t buy a victory.
There is no way the guy can line up 270 electoral votes. If he thinks he can, then he’s a fool. If (by some miracle) he forces the race into the House, he has no party to support him there. He can’t win - he can only be a spoiler.
Why not? W did.
Bush the Lesser didn’t “buy” the election. He was annointed by the Republican establishment early in the 2000 race, and so won the Republican nomination. Once you’ve got the Republican nomination you’ve got a guaranteed base of voters who will vote for you and give you money even if they can’t stand you. Bush didn’t use his personal fortune to finance his election, the Republican establishment used the party machinery to finance his election.
The trouble for Bloomberg is that he’s kidding himself if he thinks he can even come in second as an independent. If he runs, he’s guaranteed to run in third place in the popular vote, with zero electoral votes. As I’ve said before, if he’s that attractive a candidate that he can overcome the inherent advantages that the other two major party candidates will have, why isn’t he attractive enough to win one of the major party nominations? If the Democrats don’t want him and the Republicans don’t want him, why exactly does he think he can be President?
If he wants to use his candidacy as a soap-box, well, I think there are more effective ways to spend a billion dollars.
Bloomberg, regardless of what you think of his policies, is an intensely cool guy. He is, in fact, the epitome of the self-made man. He does what he thinks is the right thing to do, and he gets other people to agree with him. He’d be a great president.
… but damn, I don’t want him to run this year.
Fiscal Conservative: Someone who thinks the government should spend less money. That’s about it. Demand for a balanced budget isn’t necessary. A person who believes that a government should spend 1/4 as much as it does now, and who’s willing to accept a 100 billion dollar deficit is far more fiscally conservative than someone who wants the government spend twice as much but raise taxes enough to pay for it.
Or another way to look at it:
Fiscal Conservative: Someone who believes government should have a more limited role in the economy.
Social Liberal: Someone who thinks the government should have a more limited role in the private affairs of people.
I’m not going to accept the adoption of the term by Liberals who are basically equating fiscal conservatism to raising taxes.
Which party Bloomberg peels the most votes from is going to really depend on who the candidates are. If Fred Thompson runs and locks up the ‘base’, he could lose a lot of independents to Bloomberg because he’ll be too far to the right for many of them. If Rudy Guliani wins, he hangs on to the liberal Republicans - and the base sure isn’t going anywhere anyway. The worst they could do is stay home.
On the Democratic side, I think Bloomberg really hurts Hillary Clinton. They’re both from New York, Bloomberg’s got a much better record of accomplishment, and their political opinions are very close except for the Iraq war, and Bloomberg is more aligned with Democrats on that than Hillary is. Hillary’s negatives are polling much higher as well. I’m not sure why any Hillary voter wouldn’t rather vote for Bloomberg.
But if Obama wins, who knows? I’m not sure he’s fully positioned himself yet.
The bottom line, though, is that Bloomberg hurts Democrats more because his positions are much more aligned with them. He’s a Democrat outside the Democratic party, and that could attract a lot of disaffected Democrats.
And they’re pretty disaffected. Congress’s approval ratings are in the low 20’s - historical lows. Any time the number gets that low it means that the party has lost not just the moderates and independents, but a significant percentage of their own party. An ‘outsider Democrat’ could have big appeal next year if the Congress keeps fumbling the ball.
I’d have to take issue with that definition, Sam. It seems more a tailor-made definition to make certain the ‘right’ people end up with the label desired rather than an attempt to get to the truth.
‘Fiscal Conservatism’ if I recall some basic poli-sci and econ classes grew out of economic liberalism and had as its foundation the restraint of government taxation (I think you’re with it there) but it also featured a strong emphasis on restraint in spending and the minimalization of deficits and debt. Heck, to a certain extent the concept, as I’ve outlined it here, goes back 200 years in the United States.
To say ‘don’t change the definition’ as you’re saying is tantamount to claiming that you LIKE how the definition has changed and therefore that should be the one everyone refers to. But in truth the concept of a ‘Fiscal Conservative’ being only about restraining government spending and not including the other points is a fairly recent one and ignores the larger history of the concept.
Or, to reiterate:
A fiscal conservative
It’s a pretty straightforward concept and to focus only on one of those planks is to , in my mind, cheat.
Heck, even that whack job of a fiscal conservative Norquist says that he wants to reduce spending by cutting taxes until government can’t afford to spend. He’s nuts (meeting him is an entertaining event) but he’s honest about it.
That is exactly the definition I recall and the one I use to define a Fiscal Conservative. Great post Jonathan Chance.
Jim
No, that person is a “big-government conservative.”
That’s actually the definition of a classical liberal.
I’d have to disagree there, also. I would say that the American strain of social liberalism includes a large thread that desires to control or influence the private affairs of people.
Sua
Sometimes you post something, then realize there is a much better way to say it. Sam, your post is inherently contradictory. Government expenditures play just as big a role in the economy as government taxes. Indeed, if the government has large expenditures and borrows heavily to pay for those expenditures, the government’s role in the economy is compounded by the borrowing’s impact on interest rates and investment choices. So a person who believes in low taxes and high spending is not a fiscal conservative by your own definition.
Sua