behind the news

Mayor Mike and the blogs

No one seems to agree...
June 20, 2007

The blogosphere reacted cynically today to Bloomberg’s announced name–woops, affiliation–change. In the course of a lot of snarky commentary, especially from the New Yorkers, bloggers call the move a boon for us, a boon for them, or just plain who-cares-can-we-talk-about-something-less-boring (like Hilary’s Sopranos spoof).

We have a mental image of Lucius Vorenus from DailyKos tearing out his hair at the prospect of fellow Democrats voting for Bloomberg: “How could you flirt with a former Republican, who begged the RNC to have its convention in his city, who was recently proud of President Bush and the party, and who worked with and contributed money towards the 2004 W campaign?…Also, Bloomberg was a life long Democrat, but he wanted to be Mayor of New York City. He did not want to suffer through a crowded Democratic Primary, so he left the party, and became a Republican. In 2001!!!! During the Bush era!!! He is nothing more than a traitorous free agent who can only get elected with our support.”

Lucius may have reason to be alarmed, as there was some excitement among Dems–Mr. M at Comments From Left Field chirps: “It’s beginning to sound like Bloomberg/Hagel just took one step closer to becoming a reality!”

Andrew Sullivan’s response was more even-tempered, as usual: “The truth is: the party left us, didn’t it, Mr Mayor? And so Bush’s betrayal of conservatism may lead to a viable third party challenge. If it increases the leverage for fiscal sanity and social toleration, great.”

Conservative Matt Margolis of GOPbloggers.org rolls his eyes: “Sorry, I didn’t realize he was a Republican,” Matt writes, adding, “Interestingly enough, if he was poor, he’d get $25 dollars for making a lame political statement.”

According to MyDD’s calculations, “a Bloomberg run could help Clinton or the Democratic nominee by as much as a couple points across the board.”

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We’ll give the final word to Don Surber, for being cute: “All I can say to smokers is light ’em if you got ’em because under President Bloomberg, you’ll have to go to Mexico to smoke.”

Adrianne Jeffries is an intern at CJR.