Conversations on an Independent Presidential Candidate in 2008

• Sure, Lou Dobbs has a book to sell (Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit), but he does have a message in his CNN column this week that will resonate with the American people. "More Americans than ever before are now identifying themselves as independents, and I hope millions of Americans in the day and weeks ahead will drop their party affiliation and become independents, refusing to be taken for granted by these two political parties and refusing to be taken for fools by the candidates they're putting forward."

• I just heard Eleanor Clift of Newsweek on the McLaughlin Group's Sunday talk show predict that there will be a "serious independent run" for the White House in 2008, most likely headed by Ron Paul. Apparently this was a follow-up to an Oct. 29th broadcast prediction....

• Newsweek did a poll last week showing that if independent New York mayor Michael Bloomberg were to run as an independent for president in 2008, in a three-way race against Clinton and Giuliani, Clinton leads with 44 percent to Giuliani's 38 percent and Bloomberg's 11 percent. Which might be why Mayor Bloomberg isn't running..... [For a review of Bloomberg's road to independence, see Jacqueline Salit's Unpopular Partnerships in the Neo Independent and the Hankster post The Bloomberg Model: independent voters make the difference, from December 2006, just after Bloomberg won re-election with a new alliance between independents and black voters in NYC]