ConnecticutMan1 thinks so.

I don’t think that adding Bloomberg to any ticket, never mind one with Ron Paul, is intended to lure in votes from the Democratic party membership or the left in general.

Interestingly, the Independent Green Party of Virgina, who got way more than the 10,000 signatures needed to put Michael Bloomberg / Ron Paul on the ballot, are allied with the Independence Party of America - a party apparatus created in case Bloomberg ran.

Hmmm, maybe that answers my previous post, wondering where they got the money to get all those signatures. There are two ways to get sigs, volunteers, and I doubt the IGVA has enough volunteers to get that many signatures (they got a total of 70,000 for various races), or you pay people to do it. That costs money. Maybe this is a backdoor run by Bloomberg?

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So now we bid Ronulans a fond farewell. From their perplexing conspiracy theories to their bizarre embrace of 19′th century monetary policy, Paul’s supporters ran one of the most interesting political sideshows in a century. But it’s time for Ron Paul to board his dirigible and sail into the sunset.

Indeed, what I found most charming was the huge enthusiasm coupled with startling political naiveity that characterized many of his libertarian geek devotees.

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He say it’s “risky.” You bet. Organizing and building a major march takes months. His success up until now has been net-driven, inspired by geeks who know how to build buzz in cyberspace and has raised a startling $25 million. But that’s not at all the same skill set needed to organize a real world protest. And I say that as someone who has helped organize a multitude of protests, some of which drew hundreds of thousands.

If Ron Paul supporters do a march on DC and get a piddly turnout, that will be the end of Ron Paul as a force in the election. Paul wants to make a statement with the march and to use it as a way to rally supporters for the long term, since they’re getting demoralized. This smacks as being a desperation move for a crumbling campaign.

For any kind of effect, they’ll need at least 100,000 people. Anything less will be ignored or mocked, and seen as just another hoo-hum demo in a city where protests happen constantly. To make a real impact, they will need 500,000 and that’s not going to happen. Especially since it takes a minimum four months to build a major national demo, assuming the organizers are seasoned and skilled, something Paul’s supporters probably are not.

You Tube video by Ron Paul about the march. Here’s another tip, put the major point first and not after twelve minutes of meandering. Some of his supporters get the Net, but he sure doesn’t.

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Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis has some of the best coverage anywhere on the unfolding subprime and credit crisis. Mish voted for Ron Paul in the primary, realizes Paul can’t win now, and has switched to Obama. The war is a primary reason why.

The public is sick of this war for economic reasons. Polls show the single most important thing we can do economically is leave Iraq. That’s all you need to know. There are plenty of reason to vote against Obama. I for one, will not like many of the programs he will support.

But there is one powerful reason to vote for him. That one reason is enough.

Obama is smart enough to understand you cannot bomb enemies into an attitude change and it is a waste of money to even try.

Let’s hope Obama genuinely believes this and will end the war. Is he anti-imperialist? Of course not. But pragmatic reasons for ending the war, expense and lack of public support, will suffice just fine too. The important thing is that it ends, quickly too.

That Obama can pick up votes from libertarians who voted for Ron Paul shows how his support is cutting across all the usual boundaries.

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Ron Paul got 21% and came in third in the Republican primary in Washington State on Saturday, way better than he’s done in other states. Much of the enthusiastic support for his run comes from the tech world,and I’m guessing his strong showing in Washington was due to large numbers of computer geek libertarians voting for him.

Paul has said he will not seek a third party run but will stay in the race until the convention.

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He’s got $20 million in campaign contributions, hasn’t spent much of it, and the Libertarian Party has issued an offer for him to participate in their nominating convention in May.

Ex-House member Cynthia McKinney will probably get the Green Party nomination, thus we could have two credible-to-strong third party runs in 2008.

(And I would not count Bloomberg out quite yet either…

As for Nader, if he runs, it will be a non-event and embarrassing to him. He’s done an extraordinary amount in 4+ decades, but it’s time for him to retire before he becomes a parody of himself.)

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Lefti on the News presents a number of convincing arguments why Ron Paul is no friend of the Left.

And here’s an illuminating collection of quotes taken directly from Ron Paul’s newsletter.

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An independent presidential run by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg now looks like a near-certainty.

For Bloomberg to achieve 270 electoral votes in November, he would essentially have to supplant the Democratic nominee. Bloomberg’s strength would come in states like Democratic-leaning California and New York, not the GOP-dominated states of the South and West. That means creating a two-way contest with the Democratic ticket essentially pushed into a position of irrelevance — either that, or an election that could be decided in the House of Representatives.

Hmm, Bloomberg would certainly pull lots of potential Republican votes too, so I’m unclear on why the Democratic candidate would be irrelevant. But with a major third party candidate, the entire dynamics of the election would change. It would no longer be the tiresome ritual of two parties mud-slinging at each other.

If you then factor in a probable Green Party run by Cynthia McKinney and quite possible third party run by Ron Paul (who has specifically not ruled it out), you get the Republican and Democratic candidates, Bloomberg who says he will run right down the middle, and highly visible third party runs on both the Right and the Left.

If this happens, it will be an election unlike any we’ve had. With five prominent candidates, triangulation and the usual political machinations would be nigh on impossible. Rather than the standard slime-the-other-side approach. Campaign strategies would become so convoluted that they’d look like the image to this post. Perhaps the thought of such convoluted tactics will inspire them to talk about the issues as a way of differentiating themselves from the other candidates. It could happen.

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This puts him in the major leagues of campaign fundraising. Love him or hate him, something unusual is happening with the Paul campaign and neither mainstream nor blog media is tracking it with any accuracy.

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“Something’s happening here / What is ain’t exactly clear.”

Ron Paul raised $6 million yesterday in the “most successful fundraising day in American political history.” Sure, it was geared as a massive one day fundraiser, but still, those numbers are impressive.

His campaign has gotten major traction from usually apolitical libertarian geeks like Chris Pirillo and Adam Curry. His campaign is flying under the radar, fueled by the net. Hey, geeks do know how to spread memes through cyberspace.

Rogers Cadenhead, like many on the left, isn’t sure whether to be appalled or excited.

I can’t decide whether that rave-like scene [the video of Paul breaking $12 million] is thrilling or terrifying.
…
I can’t say I’d vote for Paul — I’m a Democrat who still believes in the necessity of many federal programs he’d destroy — but I think he brings something important to our politics: a scalpel.

That’s the crux of it. Paul is saying things no other candidate is, about the size of government, personal freedom, and interventionism. That he is coming to these views from an extreme right viewpoint hasn’t really filtered out yet. But what he is saying is absolutely resonating with many. If his polls numbers keep rising and he looks to be a threat to the mainstream Republican candidates, his free pass will be over and the long knives will be out.

But for now, he’s a genuine phenomenon.

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