Who Should Be VP?

[The Goat]

Originally Posted by 12thMan

I mildly disagree with a couple of points you make. Very respectfully I might add.

This idea that Bloomberg can add something to a ticket, I just don't see it. First of all, no one really knows what his appeal is outside of New York. Sure he's the Mayor of the largest city, has deep pockets, and he's pretty damn smart, but that doesn't always translate to votes. Which leads me to my second point about Bloomberg, if his being Mayor of New York would translate to votes in Florida, then Rudy Giuliani would have never been forced to drop out of the race so early. Rudy had a one state strategy - win Florida. If he couldn't carry Florida with all of his connections to the Jewish vote, then what good was he afterall? Well guess what happened, McCain took his ass to the cleaners in Florida, and Bloomberg took pause.

If Rudy, with all of his popularity couldn't swing enough of the Jewish vote to his favor, I have serious doubts whether or not Bloomberg could do any better.

Secondly, the idea that Obama has white working class voter problem is seriously overstated. It's just not accurate. This is something that has plagued the Dems for years, it's not specific to Obama. Obama does have an up hill battle with a very specific white voter, within a specific demographic. But to suggest that he's not getting white working classs people, male or female, to vote for him just isn't true.

My apologies for not being clear. I think Bloomberg brings muscle in terms of policy, and I mean he would bring policy acumen to any admin dem or republican. Like I said he doesn't do much for Obama politically.

As for Obama I hope you're right. Clinton seems to have done better w/ white working-class and working-poor than he has, but I don't really know how that translates into November facing McCain. I want to give props to Obama for being the most articulate, charismatic person the dems have seen in a decade and therefor he should have the best shot at communicating reasonable middle-class policies that somehow go unnoticed. One case in point I always think of here is the Family Act from the 1st clinton term that gave women the right to keep their jobs and get some extra time after pregnancy. I don't even know how many moms i've worked w/ who took every hour of leave time when they could but talk about clinton like he personally screwed them over at some point. Dems need to do a much better job communicating policy and values and Obama IMO could be have enormous success there.