I just posted this over here, but I’ll put it here too.
Via Nate Silver, here’s a (wildly optimistic) view of how Bloomberg thought he’d do against Trump and Sanders:
It’s black comedy that Bloomberg thinks he was a viable candidate who would split the Democrat vote. Bloomberg is a moron masquerading as a self-aware political cynic, and every word of this op-ed rationalizes the fact that he’d have spend vast sums of money to peel a percent or two from other candidates, influencing nothing.
This almost certainly could have been written of Trump a couple years ago.
A lot of people who vote D or R don’t actually want to vote for either, a 3rd party candidate gives them the opportunity to do so which is why Republicans are so scared of Trump going independent.
Bloomberg has the money and media stature to run a large scale campaign. By entering he could very easily peel off enough of those reluctant democrats to give Trump or Cruz the victory. First past-the-post means that if a billionaire wants to they very much have the ability to change the outcome of a presidential election.
Unfortunately, a certain millionaire may have decided to go ahead and throw his hat in the ring.
A Bloomberg run would be quite likely to give the presidency to Trump or Cruz, because if Bloomberg manages to win just a state or two, and this is enough so that neither Clinton/Sanders nor Trump/Cruz get 270 electoral votes, the House of Representatives decides. Worse, they decide using a bizarre rule that gives each state one vote (so Wyoming has the same say as California). The House would choose the Republican, and they might well do so even if the electoral vote has the Democrat in the lead. So Bloomberg is right that a run by him risks handing the presidency to Trump.
The speculation about Mitt entering the race has been rampant since his speech decrying Trump in Utah last week. I’m sure he’ll try to keep it low key until the Republican National Convention, if no candidate is selected by then
I’ve read that in the case of a brokered convention they can’t give the nomination to a primary candidate with less than 8 wins. So if they really want to avoid Trump (or even Cruz) then Rubio may not qualify and Romney is the one with the best mandate to run.
In fact he’s probably their best shot at winning the general especially since he’s no longer running against Obama and the rest of the Republican field has made him look really competent and moderate by comparison.
I saw that paperwork a few days ago. I think it’s a refilling of old paperwork from last time (or the time before) - the dailykos link in your link suggests that too.
But it’s not impossible he’s testing the waters for Ryan.
Trump takes the “angry middle” and “basically just a fascist” voters that felt detached from the political landscape.
What does Bloomberg take? There’s just no unrepresented constituency he represents that Trump does not represent better.
“Steeple-fingered moderates who just can’t condescend to Trumpery” is that contituency. I’ll give you what, a million of them? Liberally speaking.
vs
Short-fingered vulgarians …
By their digits ye shall know them!
A moron, eh?
He’s a fiscal conservative who’s socially liberal, basically a liberaltarian. It’s not a big enough constituency to support one of the two parties but it’s a pretty healthy chunk of the Democratic base. And if Bernie gets the nomination they’re probably going to feel a lot closer to Bloomberg in policies.
As for Trump it’s completely different than the authoritarian campaign Trump is running on, the only similarity is they’re both billionaires though Bloomberg has Trump thoroughly bested on that category.
If he ran for the Democratic nomination he would be a major candidate, running as an independent he could easily be another Ross Perot.
Oh no it’s Mittens, again.
what’s unfortunate about that? I’m hoping a few more losers do the same.
After the parade of lunacy we’ve been watching, Mitt looks competent and presidential. He could win.
I always thought it was pretty déclassé for a megabillionaire to run for president himself, anyway. They’re supposed to have people to handle things like that for them.
I didn’t even know Bloomberg was still thinking it over. Everybody else pretty much forgot about his candidacy about… oh… three days after he announced it. The only ones who remembered are those Republicans who are desperate for a brokered convention.
Mitt Romney is not well liked by the base, so the base doesn’t come out. He looks competent but his organization last time was incompetent. I would believe either of the two idiots now battling for first place would have a better chance. Choosing him at this point will make the Republican party itself the biggest late night joke for the rest of the year.
In fact here’s the start of my opening monologue for my late night show if they do it:
Well the big news tonight is the Republicans finally got tired of everyone talking about their dick sizes, so they decided to run with a man they were pretty sure didn’t have one.
No, no, that’s not a bad thing to say. I’m just pointing out the fact that Mitt Romney is the father on a black and white, 50’s sitcom, and the men in those shows did not have penises.
they did however have pipes. Mitt Romney doesn’t have a pipe, because he’s afraid that if he did it would have to be cleaned periodically. And cleaning your pipe is against the word of wisdom.
It’s sort of funny that Republicans like to talk about their dicks so much, but they refuse to even mention their Kochs. Ok that was maybe a little bit out of line. Sometimes I think silly things you know, like - why are the Kochs so bald? You’d think with all that money they could buy a decent wig, they’re a lot richer than Trump and look how well he did. He did really well, until he got replaced at the last minute by a cardboard cutout with the capital letter L written across his forehead.
The thing that always astounded me about Mitt Romney is - he was just such an obvious troll attempt by the GOP to see if they could get Obama to call somebody a honky.
And this is the scary thing because I realized the GOP were racists, and I realized that they were misogynists, but I hadn’t realized until now that they also were in the initial stages of alzheimers and they think honky is a derogatory term feminists use as well.
…
anyway, I guess my show wouldn’t last long past that but it would be worth it.
Very much agreed. If at this point they try to prop ol’ Mittens or Paul Ryan up and claim that it’s “for the good of America”, after this crazy primary season, voters will revolt. It’ll be a glorious shitshow.
