Which party would a Bloomberg independent bid hurt most?

[BrainGlutton]

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Fiscal Conservative: Someone who believes government should have a more limited role in the economy.
[/QUOTE]

No, no. Fiscal conservative != economic libertarian. Close regulation of the economy is, in principle, perfectly acceptable to a fiscal conservative so long as it can be done reasonably cheaply.

[Sam_Stone]

Yeah, I posted my messages poorly. What I really meant to say is that there’s more to being a fiscal conservative than just balancing the budget. A socialist who wants to double the size of government but who also wants to double the amount of taxation to pay for is not a fiscal conservative.

How about, “A fiscal conservative is someone who wants a smaller government that lives within its means.”

What I meant to say about someone being a fiscal conservative even if there’s a budget deficit is to say that someone who wants to radically expand the size and cost of government but also balance the budget is less fiscally conservative than someone who wants a much smaller government but who is willing to accept a modest deficit when circumstances require it.

Or look at another way - if the government has a 100 billion dollar deficit, the more fiscally conservative person is the guy who would balance the budget by cutting spending rather than through raising taxes.

Wikipedia has a pretty good definition:

Fiscal conservatism (also known as economic liberalism) is a term used in the United States to refer to economic and political policy that advocates restraint of government taxation, government expenditures and deficits, and government debt. It does not automatically denote advocacy of free market economics as a whole, and is a distinct concept from that of neo-liberalism.

[BrainGlutton]

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Yeah, I posted my messages poorly. What I really meant to say is that there’s more to being a fiscal conservative than just balancing the budget. A socialist who wants to double the size of government but who also wants to double the amount of taxation to pay for is not a fiscal conservative.

How about, “A fiscal conservative is someone who wants a smaller government that lives within its means.”
[/QUOTE]

Either way, a fiscal conservative is something you and I won’t live to see in the White House.

[Martin_Hyde]

I don’t think a Bloomberg bid would hurt anyone because I think he would be a great candidate. However, I think Bloomberg is such a good leader, he needs to get nominated by one of the parties. I think he’s a true moderate, meaning he has moderate opinions across the board (not someone who has a combination of extreme left and extreme right opinions) and thus could win the nomination in either party.

I sometimes fear that people forget the President is the Chief Executive, his primary role is a leadership one, not an ideological one. I think it’s way more important to get a good leader in the White House than it is to get someone whom you agree with on an ideological basis.

Congress is there to control legislation and because even when one party is at its strongest, the other side usually has enough power to moderate legislation. So that’s why I’ve always thought getting hung up on the ideology of the President isn’t necessarily the best way to decide who to vote for; I think it’s genuinely hard for a President to get anything but a moderated form of his ideas passed through Congress in any case.

Bloomberg has an amazing record as Mayor of New York. When he assumed office NYC had a $6.4bn deficit. Now, the city operates at a surplus. Murder has gone down 40% since he took over and this isn’t just coincidence, he’s instituted new ideas about fighting crime and put one of the best law enforcement officers in the United States in as Police Commissioner.

He instituted amazing reforms of the city’s public school system that have resulted in a 27.8 percent increase in the number of students who exceed state mathematics standards. He took over the Board of Education and dismantled the system of local school boards which were incredibly ineffective and laden with corruption. Strong educational gains were seen even at the poorest schools and among minority students.

He’s opened the doors of city hall to minorities, and during Bloomberg’s mayoralty there was a violent police shooting of a black citizen that did not result in a public uproar as a similar incident did during Giuliani’s term, primarily because Bloomberg handled the situation differently.

He’s concerned about the health of his citizens and instituted a trans fat ban in the city’s restaurants–which is an excellent move. Trans fat is just now starting to get in the national consciousness. Trans fat isn’t like saturated fat, which there is a healthy level of consumption (usually a few grams per day) there is no FDA approved level of trans fat consumption because it provides no dietary benefits whatsoever and only leads to negatives (it raises bad cholesterol and lowers good cholesterol.)

And the biggest thing is, he’s virtually incorruptible. There’s not going to be any exposes about what fat-cat oil company executives Bloomberg is taking money from or what major union leader he’s having $500/plate dinners with. With $1bn of his own money funding the campaign, he has no need to take a single cent from lobbyists and political donors, and thus no one will be able to accuse him of being beholden to anyone except himself. A vote for Bloomberg is a vote for Bloomberg, not a vote for the special interests he represents and who fund his candidacy.

[Captain_Socks]

Republican, because he seems to have been more sucessful as a Republican.

[BrainGlutton]

If he does run, be prepared for another round of wrangling over whether a third-party candidate gets to participate in the televised debates or not. The main parties’ candidates will support or oppose that based on strategic considerations.

They should have left that whole thing in the hands of the League of Women Voters.

[BrainGlutton]

As I already mentioned in the ongoing Clinton thread: If Clinton gets the Dem nomination, and Giuliani gets the Pub nomination, and Bloomberg makes an independent bid, the American people will have a choice between three New Yorkers! :eek:

[RTFirefly]

Jon Chait:

The official lobby of the partisanship scolds is a group called “Unity '08”–a collection of graying eminences from both parties who are calling for a bipartisan presidential ticket, perhaps led by Bloomberg. Their rhetoric appears to be targeted at people who enjoy kittens, rainbows, and David Broder columns.

I’d say it’s definitely a rather specialized niche market.

Speaking of Broder:

More than that, there is a palpable hunger among the public for someone who will attack the problems facing the country – the war in Iraq, immigration, energy, health care – and not worry about the politics.

Matt Yglesias responds:

If only, instead of the party that’s been governing the country for the past six years, there was some kind of second major party whose elected officials supported substantial policy shifts on Iraq, immigration, energy, and health care. Wouldn’t that be great? It could almost make this Bloomberg business irrelevant.

Indeed. Which is why I don’t really worry about the Dems losing many votes to Bloomberg. The only opening is on the right, where the quality of their field is having Republicans reaching for the Prozac.

[BrainGlutton]

Analysis by Micah Sifry, author of Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America:

An actual Bloomberg effort to get onto the ballot in 2008 is highly unlikely for a number of reasons. As a longtime Democrat who only switched to the Republican Party to leapfrog past a crowded and divisive Democratic primary into the general election for mayor in 2001, Bloomberg is reportedly not interested in damaging the chances of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama entering the White House. He’s been quoted asking, “What chance does a five-foot-seven billionaire Jew who’s divorced really have of becoming President?” He enjoys his privacy and spends many weekends away from the city, often in Bermuda (where neighbors of his 6,000-square-foot “cottage” reportedly include not only Perot but Italian poli-mogul Silvio Berlusconi). The odds that he would risk all that on an expensive bid for an office he might not win and a job that would drain him if he did are very low, in my view.

But Bloomberg doesn’t actually have to run for President to tilt the race his way, the classic and most beneficial role of any maverick or third-party candidate. That is, at least for the next ten months, when the first hard deadlines for ballot access close (in Texas). All he has to do is talk about his willingness to spend a half-billion dollars on a possible bid, visit some swing states every now and then and make a speech about how it’s more important to deliver effective government than score partisan points, and perhaps put a few consultants on retainer (I know of two people who keep themselves on call for him), and he will have maximized his leverage over the national debate at minimal cost. That is a move worthy of the businessman he is.

Merely by toying with a run, Bloomberg–who registered between 10 and 15 percent in the polls after he announced his change of party–can force the major candidates to pay attention to issues dear to his heart. Fortunately, many of them are sensible, like gun control, progressive immigration reform, reducing carbon emissions, trying new ways to break the poverty cycle and transparency in government. Even though he trampled civil rights when the Republican convention was held in New York City, and his police force continues to take an authoritarian approach toward free speech and assembly, Bloomberg has tried to calm, not fan, fears of terrorism. We could do a lot worse, given how many megalomaniacal billionaires this country seems to produce.

[Spoke]

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
As I already mentioned in the ongoing Clinton thread: If Clinton gets the Dem nomination, and Giuliani gets the Pub nomination, and Bloomberg makes an independent bid, the American people will have a choice between three New Yorkers! :eek:
[/QUOTE]

…very possibly re-igniting the Civil War.

[astorian]

Bloomberg would have no real appeal for anybody. He would fare so poorly that he wouldn’t hurt EITHER party much. But he’d hurt the Democrats more.

A successful third party candidate needs several things that Bloomberg doesn’t have and can’t possibly get: first, he needs a hot-button issue that gets a lot of people excited. Does Bloomberg have such an issue? No. He’s a standard liberal Democrat (a liberal Democrat who just found it convenient to pretend to be a Republican for a little while). The Democrats already have more appealing liberals running.

Second, he needs a regional base, a group of states where he knows he can command allegiance. Can Bloomberg even count on overwhelming support in New York City? No.

Third, he needs personal charm and charisma. Does Bloomberg have that? Well, that’s a matter of opinion, I suppose, but I’d say no. He doesn’t have much in the way of charm, humor or personal magnetism.

So, what is supposed to be the attraction? Not much more than “I can get things done.” WHAT things? Are they “things” most people agree need doing? “Things” most people are willing to cough up tax money for?

That kind of talk may sound fine in a mayoral race “Let’s forget about about abortion and the death penalty- I’M a guy who can get the potholes filled” can be a fine approach in a local election. But people do NOT want to think of their President in those terms. Ideology DOES matter a great deal in a Presidential election.

Let’s put it simply: could Bloomberg possibly get ANY appreciable number of votes in the states that went red in 2000 and 2004? No, absolutely none.

Could he hold some small appeal for a few Democrats? Sure, but only as long as he had the look of a winner. Once it became clear that the winner was sure to be either a Democrat or a Republican, the Democrats would abandon him completely. They remember Ralph Nader too well to support a spoiler.