Huffington Post Reports NYC Mayor Bloomberg and GOP Sen. Hagel Talking

The Huffington Post's Sam Stein has a story up that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel are holding private conversations, presumably about running for president/vice-president on an independent ticket. If that was to happen, Bloomberg would be free to use his billions of dollars to finance such a campaign. There have been reports in the past that he would use up to one billion of his own money to run for president.

Such a move, if it happens, will probably spell doom for the GOP ticket in a presidential election. It brings to mind Perot's independent run for president in 1992, which got around 18% of the total vote. Although Republicans like to argue that Perot was responsible for Clinton's victory, the truth is much more complicated. According to polls taken on election day, Perot's support came equally from both Bush and Clinton and Perot's effect was to deny Clinton a majority of the vote. This led to Bob Dole questioning the legitimacy of Clinton's victory on election night and helped fuel GOP efforts to derail the Clinton Presidency from the start.

Such a result could happen again in 2008 in the sense that a serious Bloomberg run for the presidency would mean that Republicans would be competing with Bloomberg for the votes of white men, a constituency that is vital for Republican success. In 2004, according to the CNN exit poll, Bush took 62% of the white male vote and that vote accounted for 36% of the total vote. Kerry took 27% of the white male vote. Given the fact that Bush only won by 3% nationally, competition for that vote with Bloomberg would probably make it impossible for the Republican nominee to win the Presidency against Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards.

Another interesting thing about Bloomberg running would be that if either Obama or Clinton were the Democratic nominee, you would have a person who is Jewish, a woman or an Afro-American, and a white Christian male running for President. It would be a very historic election.

All in all, a Bloomberg-Hagel ticket probably ensures the defeat of the Republican nominee and puts a Democrat in the White House.