May be Bloomberg doesn't believe that Obama is centrist enough. May be Obama, to block a Bloomberg run, should join Boren, Nunn and Broder; this will emphasize his commitment to the bi approach.

While Clinton and Obama and ALL the Republicans are more right-wing than Bloomberg AND the dieties know he has enough cash to finance an exercise in self adulation . . . Hell, if he wants to give away money, he should cut a check for $1000 to every registered voter in America rather than feed Fox, GE, Sony and the WB.

He won't be President but wealth will be redistributed . . . So who gives a shit? PRAY for Bloomberg to run.

So in Reed's version of the truth, shouldn't there be adulation, saint-hood and even deification for Ross Perot, the candidate who made possible Clinton's victory in '92 ??? If it wasn't for Perot, as I maintained at the time and have never seen any contradictory evidence since, wouldn't the popular vote have been 52% Bush and 48% Clinton?

And where in Reed's and workerbee's estimation should we hold the Democratic leaders of Palm Beach county, who produced the ballot that allowed Nader and Buchanan to get in the way of their candidate?

And how about the two Democratic candidates who allowed W to steal an election from them, and never made a peep of systematic protest either to the election supervisors, the courts, the media or their own impassioned supporters?

Isn't it curious how those Democratic leaders remain esteemed, while selective bile continues to pour by the gallon for Nader ... and mostly from self-professed "hard-core" Democrats who continue to support candidates who will not seriously impede the Republican/corporatist agenda?

I'm trying to work with Democrats ... but they are a pretty lily-livered bunch, when it ever comes to actually fighting current battles against Republicans (compared to fighting past, illusory, battles with Nader).

Every American citizen has a perfect right to run for public office: even Ralph Nader and Mayor Bloomberg. Excercising this perfectly legitimate right does not make any American either a spoilsport or evil. Why does Reed Hundt hate democracy?

True, "independent," self-financing candidates like Ross Perot can take 19% and 9%, respectively, away from the Republican Party's presidential candidate as an object lesson from America's rabid right-wing that raising taxes on America's wealthiest demographic has consequences for the party that traditionally kowtows to the monolithic monied interests. Such spitting of the Republican ticket can also twice result in election to the American presidency of mere-plurality candidates like Bill Clinton. So what? I never heard either of the Clinton Partners in Pathos call Ross Perot an "evil spoilsport" and demand that he withdraw from campaigning for office in America. Had they considered him a threat to their interests, they would have loudly condemned his candidacy.

Often-overlooked-point: Any "Democratic Party" candidate for President who stupidly selects Neocon Likudnik Holy Joe Lieberman (currently campaigning for Republican Mad Dog John McCain) as his vice presidential running mate deserves to lose. Neither Ralph Nader nor Mayor Bloomberg had anything to do with that colossal blunder, either.

Reed Hundt's comments here reek of self-serving hypocrisy. Mayor Bloomberg -- or Al Gore or Ralph Nader for that matter -- could easily still enter the presidential race for any reason they wish and whether or not they have any political party whatsoever to support them. If they can get on a ballot somewhere, good for them. The Constitution says nothing about political parties and most of our Founders abhored them as plagues upon the body politic. At any rate, as Gore Vidal correctly points out: "America doesn't have two political parties; it has one political party with two right wings." Call it the Janus -- or Two Faced -- Party for want of a better name. Ralph Nader has long and properly criticized it.

America needs someone -- or several someones -- to represent the majority of Americans now solidly to the left of the corrupt, corporate Republicrat duopoly. Neither the Democratic nor the Republican right wings of the oligarchic Janus Party represent anything but entrenched bureaucratic leeches and their corporate masters. At any rate, China, Europe, and Russia keep gaining on, and in many cases passing, a deadbeat, free-lunch America addicted to Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism. America has already crawled up its own militarist asshole and died in Middle-Eastern deserts for "oil, Israel, and Domestic Political Advantage," as my fellow Vietnam Veteran Daniel Ellsberg accurately puts it. Not even Ralph Nader or Mayor Bloomberg can resurrect the Lunatic Leviathan now.

The reason Bloomberg won't endorse a Democrat is because Obama is not sufficiently committed to killing hundreds of thousands more Muslims than we already have.

And I assume he can't support Hillary, who is so committed, for the same reasons 53% of Americans can't support her, Clinton Derangement.

To return to the original question, I don't know why Bloomberg is considering it. It doesn't appear ideological, as he has always had policy views but never a strong broader point of view; as mayor, he tends to articulate more or less liberal ideas (such as lowering confrontations between the black community and the police or city hall, as gun control, or as restoring after Koch and Giuliani at least a modest interest in new housing) within a technocratic "competence" presentation. His comments on ending partisanship seem somewhere between vague and meaningless.  (Yeah, right, sure you will.)

It can't be based on prospects of winning.  It could only seem a vanity thing, misled by too much money and flattery, but he hasn't seemed that focused on himself as mayor. So I give up.  

And sure he'd take not only more votes from Democrats, but also election prospects because of which states he'd have a chance in.  But the electoral college aside, one might think of the GOP right now as long shots because they've been reduced more and more to their core. Bloomberg voters would come from those who might not always vote for a Democrat but are alienated from the Bushies and the Bush sycophants that the Republican candidates for the nomination are playing. He could also take votes from people who are likely to vote Democratic but would at some gut level love an excuse not to vote for a black or a woman. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

"Maybe Nader noticed there was no difference between Lieberman and Cheney." Nice debate guys, but Nadar's insights weren't about war at all. He was running on the economy, stating that both parties represented corporate America. In the end, it still came down to mea culpa on NAFTA as the litmus test, trumping the Laffer curve, outsourcing, deregulation, Halliburton, Enron, the environment, ... and I could go on for a long time, but that's just within economic policy.

I can see a real truth into how America is still wedded to markets. If Nader had run on as the socialist, the modern day Eugene V. Debs, I might have given him some respect, even if might have voted Democrat in Debs's days. But he didn't. He ran as the anti-NAFTA populist, which has a bitter edge today, between Bush's victory and the right-wing attack on immigration. He also ran as the true liberal, with Gore the corporate lobbyist, and that's proved even more wrong, and thoroughly disastrous. Welcome, Bloomberg. I trust he'll get a true lunatic elected. I had so little hold on reality left anyhow. 

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

Does anyone other than Sam Waterston want Bloomberg to run?

"You say I'm a dreamer.  We're two of a kind.  Looking for some perfect world that we both know that we'll never find." - Thompson Twins, "Hold Me Now"