al gore/mike bloomberg

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Hide your metal albums, cigarettes and big gulps!

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In all seriousness I have mixed feelings about Gore but as a native New Yorker, seeing what Bloomborg did to my city I absolutely detest him and as a lefty am tempted to punch any supposed liberal that says "oh he's so great on 'public health'/guns" because apparently allowing hospitals to close and be developed into luxury condos is "public health."

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Why would Gore run with a Wall Street yuppie who mismanaged a city for a dozen years?

Believe me, Bloomberg nostalgia is coming on hard in New York.

 among upper east side yuppies and racist staten islanders maybe...

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would be a great the worst independent ticket.

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In all seriousness I have mixed feelings about Gore but as a native New Yorker, seeing what Bloomborg did to my city I absolutely detest him and as a lefty am tempted to punch any supposed liberal that says "oh he's so great on 'public health'/guns" because apparently allowing hospitals to close and be developed into luxury condos is "public health."

What's your opinion of Janette Sadik-Kahn?

What the Bloomberg administration did (or tried to do) for the environment, transpo infrastructure, and street safety was– especially from a left-of-center perspective– incredibly important and incredibly positive.  

I am willing to risk a punch over that.  For the record: a) I live in Flatbush, spiritually and physically far from both the UES and the South Shore; and b) I voted for Sal Albanese in the primary, because he was the only candidate with the cojones to do the right thing and endorse congestion pricing.

...

(This should not be construed as an endorsement of Mitty's proposal, which I think we can all agree would be a disaster.)

Not familiar with her to be honest. The environment and infrastructure aren't my issues so much as the fact that he seemed completely oblivious to the plight of anybody who wasn't rich in the city and laid off teachers while the city had a surplus, that he turned (or continued Giulianis trend) of turning the city into a virtual police state for black and brown New Yorkers and the way he treated protestors at the Republican convention. I'm also not the biggest fan of the anti-smoking and anti soda crusades which just strike me as classist. I could go on but you get the idea.

[Thunderbird is the word]

In all seriousness I have mixed feelings about Gore but as a native New Yorker, seeing what Bloomborg did to my city I absolutely detest him and as a lefty am tempted to punch any supposed liberal that says "oh he's so great on 'public health'/guns" because apparently allowing hospitals to close and be developed into luxury condos is "public health."

What's your opinion of Janette Sadik-Kahn?

What the Bloomberg administration did (or tried to do) for the environment, transpo infrastructure, and street safety was– especially from a left-of-center perspective– incredibly important and incredibly positive.  

I am willing to risk a punch over that.  For the record: a) I live in Flatbush, spiritually and physically far from both the UES and the South Shore; and b) I voted for Sal Albanese in the primary, because he was the only candidate with the cojones to do the right thing and endorse congestion pricing.

...

(This should not be construed as an endorsement of Mitty's proposal, which I think we can all agree would be a disaster.)

Not familiar with her to be honest. The environment and infrastructure aren't my issues so much as the fact that he seemed completely oblivious to the plight of anybody who wasn't rich in the city and laid off teachers while the city had a surplus, that he turned (or continued Giulianis trend) of turning the city into a virtual police state for black and brown New Yorkers and the way he treated protestors at the Republican convention. I'm also not the biggest fan of the anti-smoking and anti soda crusades which just strike me as classist. I could go on but you get the idea.

Well, the environment and infrastructure are my issues, so you'll have to understand if I pretty much always take them into account– and hope that other folks do so as well.

His approach to policing/race was not as bad as Giuliani, but that's a ludicrously low bar. It was utterly awful and the worst part of his tenure.  No argument there.

As for the "soda ban", I'm perpetually amazed that people actually care about that. The whole shebang seemed like just an awful sideshow sh*tshow. Sure, the ban's proposal was ham-handed and kinda sloppy/unfair on the specifics, and even if you've got the science on your side it's a pretty dumb use of one's political capital.  But OTOH you had Coke and Pepsi and their big-money lobbyists pouring millions into advertising all the while painting themselves as little-guy grassroots populists striking a blow against the Big Bad Nanny State or something.  I still can't get over the hypocrisy of that. Think we're gonna have to agree to disagree on this one.

Those issues aren't unimportant to me, and if Bloomberg did achieve some progress in those areas well even a broken clock. As far as the soda thing goes, it's true that a lot of that grassroots activism might have been astroturfed but even so I really do have a problem with a billionaire being so concerned about what poor people are drinking especially when the problems of obesity have a lot more to do with government policy in terms of subsidizing corn growers.

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This is exactly the type of ticket that the moderate heroes, Very Serious Pundits, and WalterMitties of the world would adore, but that would have trouble cracking 2% in the real world.

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If we want to imagine centrist third party runs, here are a few to think about (I know none of these would realistically happen):
Manchin/Huntsman
Huntsman/Bloomberg
Bloomberg/Collins

Booker/Huntsman

Cuomo/Hagel

I also remember around 2007 John Stewart joking about people talking about a possible Unity08 ticket of Bloomberg-Hagel sounding like a rare genetic disease. "Vote Bloomberg-Hagel, better then Tay-Sachs!"

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I'll sooner vote Republican than for any ticket with Bloomberg on it.