Bloomberg in 2008?

Dick Morris must be off his meds this morning as he suggests that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg could be elected president in 2008 running as an independent:

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg can win the presidency in 2008 if he runs as an independent, says political strategist Dick Morris.

Not only is the billionaire Republican a viable candidate for the White House, but the time has never been better for an independent to triumph in the general election, according to Morris.

If Hillary Clinton gets the Democratic nomination and a staunch conservative like Virginia Sen. George Allen defeats John McCain or Rudy Giuliani for the GOP nod, "the way will be wide open for a strong independent candidate,” the former White House adviser writes in the New York Post.

With the system we have now, no independent is going to be able to muster up enough support or campaign infrastructure to win a national campaign (see also Anderson, John and Perot, Ross) - even if he's a billionaire. Perot pretty much guaranteed Clinton's victories by taking votes from Bush and Dole. Anderson was pretty much a non-event.

Bloomberg can't win but he could possibly hurt whichever candidate he's most ideologically close to. If you look at Bloomberg carefully, he's more Democrat than Republican.

Morris has also recently told us that Hillary can win, and that Al Gore (who's even wackier left than Hillary) can beat Hillary, so his argument now seems a little specious. I think Morris just ran out of ideas for his column.