Democrats Wondering About New York Mayor's Race?

     There’s an article today about the reasons why Bill Thompson lost the NYC mayoral race to Mike Bloomberg by 5 points, despite being overwhelmingly outspent & outcampaigned  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33624244/ns/politics-more_politics/. The basic underlying point of the article is that if the White House (specifically Obama) & other prominent Democrats had campaigned with Thompson, he might have pulled off the upset.

     There are two things that the article fails to take into account. The first is that Bill Thompson ran a really bad campaign. By the looks of it, he didn’t really start his campaign until after the September primary. I guess he figured that he was going to win the primary, despite going up against at least 3 other candidates, so why spend money on name recognition, like Mike Bloomberg did?. In fact, I didn’t even see a campaign commercial from Thompson until mid October. I remember seeing a front page article about Thompson with the headline “Who’s the other guy running for mayor?”. Not exactly a ringing endorsement on his campaign or lack there of, in this case.

     The other thing is that, for the most part, people really like Mike Bloomberg, even the White House. A little Bloomberg history. Mike Bloomberg was a life long Democrat who ran as a Republican back in 2001 because there were only 2 Republicans running versus 8 other Democrats. He’s about as liberal a Republican as you’re going to get, with his antismoking, pro gay rights, & anti gun policies. Plus, he became an Independent a couple of years ago yet managed to be put on the ballot as both an Independent & a Republican (I’m still trying to figure out how that’s possible).

     Obama endorsed Thompson because he had to but in the same endorsement, Obama praised Bloomberg profusely. I call it playing both sides of the fence. Most people call it politics. Either way, Obama got who he really wanted as the next mayor. For most Democrats, it would be considered a loss. For the White House, it’s a win & no amount of hand ringing by the Associated Press or anybody else is going to change that.