Mike Bloomberg's Numbers Are Worse Than Ron Paul's?
January 25, 2008 -- 2:33 PM EST // //
One thing that really makes me want to go out and start knocking off people's hats, as Herman Melville put it in Moby Dick, is the ongoing media coverage of Mike Bloomberg's flirtation with an independent run.
Two questions about this coverage: First, when the heck will it stop being news every time Bloomberg lobs his self-serving and ultimately meaningless criticism at the presidential candidates and at Washington political leaders? And second, when will actual poll numbers shedding light on public opinion about an indy run enter the coverage and the media conversation about this?
The first question arises in light of this post by Digby, which points us to yet another piece in The New York Times about yet another speech that Bloomberg has now given criticizing Washington leaders. Bloomberg's argument: Politics is bad. But really, why is this news? He has done this countless times already, always in the same droning platitudes.
Look, the reason the big news orgs see Bloomberg's constant criticism of Washington leaders as newsworthy is because it "fuels speculation" about his presidential run. But Bloomberg has been "fueling speculation" about this for months. Barring an actual entry into the race, is there any point at which this stops being worthy of coverage?
Meanwhile, Atrios points us to this fun post by Chris Bowers pointing to new polling of voter attitudes towards Bloomberg. Bowers concludes that Bloomberg is "less popular than the top three Democrats and the top three Republicans running for President right now. He even has lower overall favorables than Ron Paul."
Of course, Bloomberg is hardly known across the country and $100 trillion worth of ads could change things a bit. Nonetheless, as luck would have it, there are other numbers out there that shed light directly on public attitudes towards an indy run. A recent Gallup Poll probed these questions in some detail, and found that 84% think there's already a candidate running or the White House right now who would make a "good president," while a solid majority of 58% feels that one or more candidates has "good ideas for solving the country's problems."
These numbers run directly counter to Bloomberg's self-serving critique of the presidential candidates, as does Gallup's conclusion:
"The American public does not appear to believe it is important or necessary for an independent candidate outside of the traditional two major parties to step into the race in order to save the nation."Since the pundits who talk up the prospect of a Bloomberg indy run keep telling us that they're doing so on behalf of a fed-up electorate, you'd think that numbers shedding light on the public's actual attitudes towards this stuff would enter the conversation at some point.
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