On March 7, Michael Bloomberg said he will not run for President this year. Thanks to several people for this news. See this story.
Bloomberg View has the text of the announcement.
On March 7, Michael Bloomberg said he will not run for President this year. Thanks to several people for this news. See this story.
Bloomberg View has the text of the announcement.
It’s been a short two weeks!! (See post earlier today.)
I am disappointed at this news, but I do see Bloomberg’s reasoning.
He knew the reality of a third party run all along. His flirtation with running was a hoax – he was just looking for media coverage. He’s no different than any other run of the mill politician – he’s a narcissist looking to have his ego inflated even more.
Don Wills, I don’t agree. The story says he had already paid to set up many field offices in Texas and North Carolina, in readiness to start petitioning in those two states. They have the earliest and 2nd earliest deadlines of the 50 states. He probably already spent a lot of money.
Don, maybe you should read articles before commenting? And you are laughable to say that an historic third party/independent run for the presidency by Bloomberg wouldn’t be different from a “run of the mill politician”
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/automatic-voter-registration-takes-hold-west-coast-37454185
switching subjects.
Bloomberg in “an historic run”? Now that’s laughable. He would have been lucky to win a plurality in any state. Remember Perot? He did “an historic run”. 19% of the vote translated to ZERO electoral votes. IMO, Bloomberg would have done worse than Perot, and nowhere near what George Wallace did in 1968 when he won 5 states and 46 electoral votes – now that’s historic.
And FWIW, my guess is that Bloomberg’s spending of a couple million in TX and NC (chump change for him as he’s at least 5 times wealthier than Trump) was contingent planning in case Hillary got indicted or Bernie won the nomination, neither of which are going to happen.
And whatever happened to Americans Elect?
Have to mostly agree with Don here. Except the fact that the reason why Perot didn’t win the election or second place is because he dropped out in the middle of the 92′ election over being blackmailed and then re-entered a few months later -only to have lost a big chunk of support in the polls, of which he couldn’t entirely recover.
Wallace was hoping to win enough electoral votes to deny Nixon & Humphrey a electoral majority and throw the election to the U.S. House, yet picking a poor, divisive candidate like Curtis LeMay, along with a few minor missteps his campaign took ruined that possibly right before it blossomed.
A Perot-like, or a well funded and popular third-party or independent candidate does have a realistic possibility of winning the White House, yet it could only happen under both the right set of circumstances AND by making any kind of errors that would kill or slightly diminish your polling numbers & widespread support.
Meant *AND by not making any kind of errors…
Bloomberg thinks HILLARY CLINTON (as well as the rest of the Dem/Repub candidates) is an “ideological purist”, did I read that right? Wow…just wow. He doesn’t seem to have a grasp of the divide between what the Democratic and Republican Parties say they are for, and what many of their elected candidates ultimately decide to do when in office.
I knew he wouldn’t run, but I figured he wouldn’t want to run against Hillary Clinton because they were both Establishment types. I guess I misjudged Bloomberg; he’s just politically confused.
Well, if Jesse Ventura doesn’t run (I’ve seen an article on Yahoo claiming he was toying with the idea if Bernie Sanders didn’t get the Dem nomination), I think Jill Stein will be fairly well placed to be the leading candidate for those who don’t want to support either current ruling party, especially among Bernie Sanders’ supporters.
Joshua –
Her “ideological purism” is rooted in traditional DLC values. That is, expose whatever ideology necessary to get elected. During a campaign, Hillary Clinton is a wind sock.
@Don Wills: Americans Elect effectively fell apart in May of 2012, when no candidate received the minimum number of supporters to compete in its online primary, thus forcing the online primary to be cancelled. Apparently the Americans Elect corporate organization formally dissolved around the end of 2012, although AE may have retained political party status in certain states.
The people who organized AE may have future plans but I don’t know what those really are.
To keep track of what the Americans Elect organizers might be involved in, a good resource is http://irregulartimes.com/archives/americanselect/ (albeit from a left-wing, anti-AE perspective).
There’s also the Libertarian Party, and there’s the possibility of an anti-Trump third party/Indy GOP/conservative party if Trump gets the nomination. (Paragraph) The naming of Curtis LeMay by Governor Wallace is a case where politics can change in a single hour. LeMay’s view on nukes in Vietnam cost Wallace about five million votes. A good account of the story is the bio George Wallace, Jr. wrote about his father.