From Room Eight:
The following is a quote from David Seifman's New York Post column of this morning:
- "Mayor Bloomberg's campaign crew's excuses for his shockingly close 4.6 percentage-point win over Bill Thompson go something like this:
* No matter that we consistently told everyone publicly he was leading by double digits, we knew that it was going to be very close. We did this to hurt Thompson's fund-raising and to convince as many Democrats as we could to not go anywhere near him."
So it really comes down to the fact that Bloomberg's extravagantly paid campaign staff knew how close the race was but spent money beyond all of our wildest imaginations and put out a lie.
Just as the team set out to distort Thompson's record, so did the team even distort the polls. One has to wonder why the pollsters went along with Wolfson and Sheeky and remained silent during the distortions. I will forever be convinced that the polls made a tremendous difference in this race. It allowed Democrats to be either mildly in support of Thompson or outright endorse Bloomberg.
From You're a Disgrace:
The New York Times flat out blew their coverage of the mayor's race. Check out these screen shots from election night as the Times scrambles to recover from a combination of bad polling data and over zealously biased reporting:
At 9:54, the NY Times reports that Bloomberg has "decisively defeated" Thompson:
At 9:58 pm, they remove "decisively" and downgrade to simply, "defeated".At 10:54 pm, the mayor now "appears to prevail," and the headline and story are bumped down a section.
The New York Times has been in Bloomberg's pocket since he first looked at extending term limits in August 2008, so it isn't surprising that they were a little over anxious to call the election for him so quickly in '09.
From the NY Observer:
Michael Bloomberg's embarrassingly narrow victory margin last week may embolden Democrats to do in his third term something they largely refused to do this year: attack him.
With all the world assuming that the mayor was coasting toward a re-election landslide - and with polls showing him running even with (or even slightly ahead of) Bill Thompson among registered Democrats - most big-name Democrats, in New York and nationally, calculated that there was more to be lost than gained in going after Mr. Bloomberg.
But when Election Day rolled around, Mr. Bloomberg barely cleared the 50 percent mark, beating the woefully underfunded Democratic nominee by just 4.6 points - a far cry from the 19-point landslide he enjoyed in 2005. Had Mr. Bloomberg replicated, or even improved upon, that '05 performance this year, the Democratic love-fest would have continued well into his third term - even among his would-be Democratic successors.
Instead, though, last week's results have awakened Democrats (and the press) to the more complicated reality of Mr. Bloomberg's public standing in New York: In short, voters still generally approve of his performance - 70 percent of them, according to the exit poll conducted last week. (That number, it should be noted, is slightly inflated, given that the exit poll missed the closeness of the vote.) But they also resent his heavy-handedness, his obscene campaign spending and his transactional nature.
What's more, New Yorkers' growing personal distaste for their mayor will probably start dragging down his job approval rating soon. Lingering economic anxiety (barring a miraculous turnaround) and the seemingly inevitable voter fatigue that accompanies every third term practically ensures this.
16 comments:
But vat about my fourth term?
Guess what? Every Reublican I spoke to told me "No way will I vote for Bloomberg". Perhaps the press should check that out.
Perhaps now some city council members will see the Commissar's weakened condition, will oppose him at every turn.
What will be interesting is to watch his transsexual lover Quinn's battle to save the speakership for herself.
What do either of these freaks owe each other?
Wah! Wah! Wah! Whenever you are ready to take off your skirt and rejoin society, we will be ready.
At first glance I thought that chart was a chart for rich white people and everyone else. Look at the chart, all the neighborhoods that voted heavily for bloomberg are heavily white and those neighborhoods that voted for Thompson are all "minority" neighborhoods.
If you look at it real close you see that light skin people voted for bloomberg (except for hispanic light skinned) and dark skin people voted for Thompson.
Nyc, the most overtly segregated and covertly racist city in America.
Thompson should not have hired Nate Smith to oversee the underpaid canvassers. Nate, who is a staff member of what else? The Working Families Party, sent canvassers only into ghetto/black neighborhoods, East NY, the South Bronx & Jamaica. While white voters had no idea who Thompson is, Nate Smith wasted precious time preaching to the choir. Staff members were repeatedly harangued about bathroom and lunch breaks, were verbally abused and fired when they made reasonable requests such as requesting that they be paired up to knock on doors.
This is the man who lost the election for the Democrats.
Thompson's campaign under Nate Smith's direction violated labor laws, forcing canvassers to sign bizarre agreements. Anyone want a copy?
When asked who he reports to, Nate's answer was no one. If that's true who the heck is Eddie Castell?
That was Thompson's major mistake, hiring Nate Smith who in turn put under 25 year olds from out of the city in positions of authority.
Uh, I forgot!
Crapper is under the delusion that the lumpen proletariat are falling over themselves to work for free for candidates. wake up Crapper. it's a paying proposition. some of us are the pros, the rest are just amateurs
I really have no idea what you are talking about. I have the sneaking suspicion that neither do you.
Crapper, you think people put up those campaign signs on lightposts in the early hours for free!!!
Ask Eddie Castell who Nate Smith is. If he pretends not to know, get in touch with me.
Over two hundred years ago, Americans fought to rid themselves of a hereditary monarchy. We've simply replaced it with a moneyed oligarchy. SS,DD!
From substandard housing, to explotation on the job, to corrupt pols to newspapers that are a joke.
We used to read about this in history books confident that these were things, like bedbugs and TB, out of the 19th century.
Oh well....
Must be my bleary eyes playing tricks with me at 1 AM, but I kept reading "Eddie Castell" as "Eddie Haskell." I wonder if this Castell dude is as smarmy as the Haskell character (from "Leave It to Beaver," FYI).
I was so relieved that Bloomberg won. In the middle of a recession his experience with running a major company comes in handy. When someone is rich and successful it is a good thing, not a bad thing. They've done many things right to get to where they gotten. I'm not interested in the recently popular" vote for a minority just because they are a minority" movement. I'd rather vote for qualified leaders that can lead our cities and country in the right direction. Personally, I'm uninterested in the color of anyones skin, it means nothing. I'm more interested in intelligence, behavior and professionalism.
"I'm not interested in the recently popular" vote for a minority just because they are a minority" movement."
Neither am I. That's not what this was about.
"I'd rather vote for qualified leaders that can lead our cities and country in the right direction."
Bloomberg has proven that's a necessity and that he's not the one to do it.
"I'm more interested in intelligence, behavior and professionalism."
Me too. Once again, if that's what you're looking for, Bloomberg is definitely not your man.
I was so relieved that Bloomberg won.
Really? And when was the last time you took your head out of your butt to see that he is headng this city down the path of destruction? I predict that sometime in the next 4 years, more people will be calling our home...NEW YORK SHITTY!!!
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