Mayor Bloomberg is headed to primary battleground New Hampshire Friday, fueling speculation he's planning a 2012 presidential run.
The mayor will be the first speaker in a presidential lecture series at Dartmouth College, alma mater of gal pal Diana Taylor.
The speech comes as the third-term mayor has been raising his political profile, including making a trip to Milwaukee today to endorse Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett in his bid for governor of Wisconsin.
"I think it's in his interest as a lame duck mayor to be appearing to run for higher office. It helps his political currency," said Columbia University's Steven Cohen.
Well, I guess he could always run for a fourth mayoral term.
He is Mayor 4 Life, after all.
But running for president is more likely in his future.
He's got $150 billion dollars to drop on a campaign.
The economy is tanking again, unemployment is expected to head toward double digits before the end of the year, Obama has wasted the stimulus money on bullshit like Race to the Top rather than actually putting actual people into real jobs.
So you can make a case for Bloomberg getting an opportunity to run as some micromanager/billionaire savior who can take the country out of recession.
Not saying I actually believe that bullshit, just that I can see Howard Woolfson and others on the mayor's staff making that case.
And then you always have these Independence Party people Bloomberg has bought off saying how they want Mike in 2010.
Of course all these Independence Party people are on Bloomberg's payroll, but so are the press people who cover politics.
So it will all look like some grassroots movement.
Faux grassroots, of course, but you'd really have to be paying attention to notice the difference and cut under the Times/Daily News/Post hype about it.
Now could a prickly billionaire Jew from New York actually win the presidency?
Probably not, especially since running for president will require Mike to do things he really hates doing (i.e., talking to people rather than talking down to them, acting like he gives a shit about people rather than doing and saying whatever the fuck he wants.)
But with a $150 billion to spend on the election and an ego even bigger than his wealth, Bloomberg sure could wreak havoc in the campaign.
Scary. Maybe I'll leave the country after all. I actually think I'd prefer to see Sarah Palin in the White House. Her lack of intelligence is less frightening than his evilness.
ReplyDeleteThough I don't know why others are characterizing him as a lame duck- can't he now run for Mayor as often as he pleases? Mayor4Life is a lot more accurate a description.
This is one way New York City can get rid of him. I seriously doubt he'll play that well outside of our arrogance-tolerating little metropolis. There are areas of this country where some rational thought still prevails. The sparsely populated state of Vermont, for instance, has a growing secessionist movement. In reality, it's not a workable idea, but at least there are thinkers' voices being raised, not just the voice of an extremely narcissistic, condescending little turtle-faced power hungry fascist "mayor".
ReplyDeleteHe'll have to change the law to run for mayor again, and he'll have to walk on water to win the presidency. Perhaps he'll learn the hard way what happens to people who try to walk on water.
ReplyDeleteShould that not occur, it would be interesting to see who he draws more votes from--I suspect it would be the Democrat.
I'm sure he'll use the Obama "election playbook"...Appear and say things that are voter-friendly before you're elected, then do whatever the hell you want once you're in.
ReplyDelete