Split-the-vote-'08

I just want to say one quick thing about the draft Bloomberg idea, and then I'm going to do my best not to write anything else about it, as I imagine that the draft Bloomberg movement probably feels a great sense of accomplishment every time they realize they've pissed off another liberal blogger. As Yglesias says, a Bloomberg candidacy may well split the liberal vote and subject us to four or eight more years of our national nightmare. Which is a reminder, in some ways, that the national nightmare itself is the product of the vote-splitting fiasco caused by the Nader campaign. But there's an important difference. Nader and his voters were operating under a shared belief that the two major parties are so bought and sold by corporations that they've basically grown indistinguishable. I think that's a contestable idea, but it is, at the very least, sincere, and the movement was driven by a desire to make the country a better place.

Draft Bloomberg, by contrast, is driven by a desire to... what... irritate liberal bloggers and make politicians sound nicer when they disagree about things? To make the members of the coalition feel as if they have a place in the national discussion? Well, proposition one is simply unworkable in the current political climate, and proposition two, it seems to me, isn't worth the cost of more war in Iraq and catastrophic climate change. But that's just me.