Edwards voted for the war. Should he wear a hairshirt before we can all support him? My god, the silliness one comes across during the primaries (which you yourself noted not long ago).

While the timing might be a bit odd, I'm not sure why a Dem candidate's meeting with the CURRENT NYC mayor who is not only no longer a registered Pub but a former Dem and who thus might possibly be of some use in helping him or her pick up some primary votes--not just in NY but nationwide, given how popular Bloomberg is--is such a sacriligious act. If Obama has been having any thoughts whatsoever of pulling a Lieberman, then I will be the first to condemn his as a traitor to the party. But this is not how I read this meeting.

He is trying to woo the center and soft right--his surrogate in Iowa said as much in a recent town hall type meeting with all the other Iowa surrogates on CSPAN--who are either leaning Dem, or liable to do so, either in the primaries (where some are allowed to vote even if they're not registered Dems) or in the general, should he win the nomination. And he's doing it not by hanging out with neocons like Lieberman or Kristol, but with centrists like Bloomberg. This is bad?

Since when did we become the party (cough, tent) of only the true left? We have an historic chance to not only bring back those Reagan Democrats and win over a wide part of the independant center, but also woo more than a few moderate and quite unhappy Pubs. Again, this is bad? So long as he tries to appeal to them from the left (or center-left) and doesn't adopt outright GOP policies (and yes, I know about his stupid anti-Krugman statements and nonsense about a social security crisis and being against mandates, all of which I've criticized him for), I don't see what's wrong with this.

His whole campaign has been about ending the 50+1% era of partisanship, not by triangulating, not by moving to the right, not by trying to do to the right what the right has been doing to the left, but by building as broad a coalition of supporters as possible in a way that does not call for selling out a progressive agenda. It might be to the right of Edwards, but it's still left of center and I'd argue in many ways left of Clinton (although not on health insurance I would agree--he really needs to come around on mandates). If he can win by doing this, he will have the political capital to pretty much ignore the hard right, i.e. people to the right of Bloomberg on domestic policy and to the right of Hagel on foreign policy. And the way to do this is by winning over folks like Bloomberg.

Again, I see this meeting as Obama trying to win over Bloomberg, or at least neutralize him as a potential problem in the general (not just if he wins, but for any Dem), and NOT with any thoughts of endorsing him Lieberman-style should he lose the nomination. Obama will support the Dem nominee. I am convinced of that. He will be politically dead if he doesn't. This is not 1852 and the Dems are not the Whigs. If anything, the GOP is (but even they're currently far from that state), which is why Hagel isn't running (either for reelection or the presidency) and why Bloomberg left it. But we're seeing enough concern troll nonsense coming from the Hillary camp about Obama (and will no doubt see vastly more from the right if he wins), that we don't need to see yet more of it from the left.

"I see Huckabee as more of a Prairie populist than what I would consider a traditional conservative," said former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a stalwart of the conservative movement once considered a 2008 presidential contender himself. "I don't see how he takes that show across the East Coast or even the Midwest."

As a preliminary matter, you group together events that have happened a month apart as if they are part of some linked series of events. Obama met with Bloomberg a month ago. It had nothing to do with these stupid new reports about the Broder Axis of Stupidity Unity 08 BS.

In fact, if you read the very link you provide, you will see a far more plausible explanation for the meeting than that Obama is considering endorsing some third party candidacy:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- New York may be Sen. Hillary Clinton's home turf - but the man in charge, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, met this morning with Barack Obama, one of her chief rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.

. . .

While Bloomberg has always spoken well of Clinton, he feels no special hometown loyalty to the senator, who failed to endorse him during his two mayoral runs, when he ran as a Republican.

Bloomberg reached out to the Obama campaign, according to campaign spokesman Bill Burton, who told CNN's Mary Snow the pair discussed issues from the economy and education to homeland security and global warming - but wouldn't say whether the two talked about a possible presidential endorsement.

First of all, it was Bloomberg who arranged the meeting, not Obama. Second, this was a month ago. Are we really supposed to believe that a month ago, Obama was plotting abandoning the Democratic party to endorse some stupid third party? This is far more than a stretch; it makes no sense at all.

You can claim I am saying this because I support Obama, but you would be wrong. The strength of my support isn't near what you believe, and although I don't plan on caucusing for her, I am very fond of Hillary.