The Bloom Is Off The Berg

Word to Obama:

He arrived here for what seemed like it could be a big moment. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, eyeing a third-party presidential bid, joined Republican and Democratic elders at a forum to denounce the extreme partisanship of Washington and plot how to influence the campaign.

But even as the mayor gathered on Monday with the seasoned Washington hands on the campus of the University of Oklahoma, the surging presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama seemed to steal energy from the event and set off worry elsewhere among Mr. Bloomberg’s supporters.

Mr. Obama has stressed that he wants to move beyond gridlocked politics and usher in an era of national unity. A key organizer of the effort to draft Mr. Bloomberg for a presidential run acknowledged in an interview on Monday that that Mr. Obama’s rise could be problematic.

“Obama is trying to reach out to independent voters, and that clearly would be the constituency that Mike Bloomberg would go after,” said Andrew MacRae, who heads the Washington chapter of Draft Mike Bloomberg for President 2008. “An Obama victory does not make it impossible, but it certainly makes it more difficult.”

Then again, how scary have you considered whether Bloomberg could avoid being a spoiler to Hillary by joining her? This passage in this week’s John Heilemann column jumped out:

But Clinton’s bid, as her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, said after the caucuses, “was built for a marathon.” (Or, as one rival operative put it to me, “They’ll start a fucking third party before they’ll give up on putting her in the White House.”)