Run Baby Run

Political Wire: Bloomberg Sounds Like a Candidate

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R), "sounding every inch the presidential candidate he insists he is not, brought his message of pragmatic, nonpartisan leadership to California on Monday, telling a crowd of Google employees that the nation was 'really in trouble,'" the New York Times reports.

I'll still never like the guy, but I hope to high heaven he runs. He'll never win, independently or on any ticket, but the voters he peels off would almost certainly be the libertarians within the GOP--people who'd never vote for Hillary (or any Democrat), but who are sufficiently fed up with the GOP to cast a protest vote. (And if he somehow did win, we could do worse than a smart, competent social liberal.)

This is, however, contingent on Giuliani's not getting the nomination. That scenario would (a) force the religious right to get behind a third-party campaign (and it's hard to imagine the only pro-life candidate getting less than 5% in a general election), and (b) lead to the absurd spectacle of three New Yorkers running for president.