Bloomberg could have a shot, Nader believes

Poor track record for outsiders
History is not on Bloomberg’s side, however, as Nader learned in 2000, when he won less than 3 percent of the vote across the country. Many Democrats believe most of his votes in Florida would otherwise have gone to Vice President Al Gore, giving Gore a victory in Florida over George W. Bush and handing Gore the White House.

In 1968, former Democratic Gov. George Wallace of Alabama formed his own party with the mission to be a spoiler, hoping to throw the election to the Electoral College and expand his political clout. He won five Southern states, siphoning Southern Democratic votes from Vice President Hubert Humphrey, giving Richard Nixon a small but decisive win.

As an independent in 1992, businessman H. Ross Perot won almost 20 percent of the vote — not enough to win the presidency, but more than enough to allow Bill Clinton to oust President George H.W. Bush in a three-way race.

In 1996, Perot ran again, as the nominee of the Reform Party, picking up less than half as many votes but allowing Clinton to win reelection without a majority.

Ed Rollins, who managed Perot’s 1992 campaign, said Bloomberg had special advantages: name recognition and billions of dollars. Associates told MSNBC that Bloomberg would be prepared to spend at least a half-billion dollars if he decides to press forward with a campaign.

“With his kind of resources and his ability and willingness to spend, he can sort of set an agenda that other candidates may have to deal with,” Rollins said Wednesday on “Hardball.”

MSNBC video Third-party prospects June 20: The history of third-party campaigns is not promising for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. MSNBC’s David Shuster reports. Hardball

Moreover, he added, “Bloomberg has built a gigantic media outlet, and he understands the game better than anybody.”

Bloomberg has said he is not interested in being a spoiler, telling associates that if he runs, it will be only because he expects to have a solid chance to win. But the political stars would have to line up just right for him to have even a sliver of a chance, said Larry Sabato, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia.

“Bloomberg has to be willing to spend a half-billion, probably a billion, dollars of his own money, and the two parties have to nominate candidates who are probably polarizing and unacceptable to millions of Americans,” Sabato told NBC News’ David Gregory.

Nader loyalist welcomes Bloomberg
Nader’s campaign manager in 2000 and 2004, Theresa Amato, encouraged Bloomberg to join the race, saying the more the merrier.

“We’re not a two-party system. The word ‘party’ doesn’t show up in the Constitution,” she said Wednesday on “Hardball.” “Everybody should be able to run for president in the United States.”

But she agreed that Bloomberg would have a tough time of it, saying the deck was stacked against independent and thirf-party candidates.

“The problem here is not with third parties. The problem is that two parties have made it difficult the for third parties to compete,” said Amato, who is now executive director of the Citizen Advocacy Center, a nonprofit political reform group.

“There are structural barriers to entry, from the ballot access laws [to] the commission on presidential debates,” which she said “makes it very hard for anybody else, except for the two parties, because it is a private corporation that allows the Democrats and Republicans to talk to tens of millions of voters.”

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