INDEPENDENT RUN WOULD DAMAGE THE DEMS WORSE (Bloomberg)

NY Post ^ | June 21, 2007 | CHARLES HURT

[neverdem]

Mayor Bloomberg has just given new meaning to the "D" after the names of White House hopefuls such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. It usually stands for Democrat - but now might just as well mean disaster.

That's because all across Washington yesterday, Republican officials, consultants and candidates themselves were becoming increasingly convinced that:

A) Bloomberg may indeed jump into the 2008 race, and

B) If he does, the mayor is going to pull far more votes from the eventual Democratic nominee than the GOP standard-bearer.

Republican sources confidently dismissed earlier polls finding Bloomberg stealing votes roughly equally from each party nominee, or even taking more from the Republicans.

Today, they believe that what they call Bloomberg's extreme liberalism on social issues - outspokenly pro-gay marriage, proudly in favor of abortion, refusing to take a back seat to anyone when it comes to tougher gun control, an advocate for legalizing every illegal - can't help but cut into the Democrats' base, perhaps deeply.

One Democrat on Capitol Hill described Bloomberg's possible independent candidacy as a "nightmare" for the party - just at a time when Democrats believed everything was breaking their way.

There's an unpopular Republican war, a lame-duck president with some of the lowest approval ratings ever recorded, and a pervasive feeling that the country is heading in the wrong direction and it's time for a change - the most powerful force in electoral politics.

So if Bloomberg runs, "this is clearly going to hurt Democrats overall," moaned one Democrat.

"It will be an in-kind contribution to Republicans," crowed a GOP political operative.

One Republican strategist aligned with a presidential campaign compared a possible Bloomberg bid to the 1992 independent campaign that earned another billionaire, Ross Perot, nearly 19 percent of the popular vote...

[winner3000]

I heard Cynthia McKinney is running under the Green Party banner. That should take care of the bigot moonbat wing of the Democrat party (and some black folks if Obama is not the nominee). The more the merrier!