Obama’s Success Makes a Bloomberg Campaign Moot

Barack Obama’s determination to unite Americans and his strong electoral showing in Iowa, fueled in no small part by independents, have taken the wind out of Michael Bloomberg’s sails. The New York mayor has been, by some accounts, considering an independent run for president, but now there just doesn’t seem to be much of a point.

New York Times:

But even as the mayor gathered on Monday with the seasoned Washington hands on the campus of the University of Oklahoma, the surging presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama seemed to steal energy from the event and set off worry elsewhere among Mr. Bloomberg’s supporters.

Mr. Obama has stressed that he wants to move beyond gridlocked politics and usher in an era of national unity. A key organizer of the effort to draft Mr. Bloomberg for a presidential run acknowledged in an interview on Monday that that Mr. Obama’s rise could be problematic.

“Obama is trying to reach out to independent voters, and that clearly would be the constituency that Mike Bloomberg would go after,” said Andrew MacRae, who heads the Washington chapter of Draft Mike Bloomberg for President 2008. “An Obama victory does not make it impossible, but it certainly makes it more difficult.”

Read more