Perhaps the most revealing part of this is that Bloomberg is only a Republican because he couldn't get the primary nod as NYC mayor for the Democrats. Before that he was a lifelong Democrat and his policy positions are almost all to the left of most national level Dems (though that might be damning with faint praise).

I think he would have rather covered the Democratic candidates forum, which of course he moderated.  I think that would have made him much happier ("Howard do see how I asked that question ...").

The Bloomberg story just wasn't that big to get almost wall to wall coverage on Hardball.  The producers screwed up.

As much as I wanna follow the liberal herd on this one, I find nothing wrong with asking Hillary about her thoughts of a possible Libby pardon. Republicans are the ones that think this case is not a big deal. We think outing one of our secret agents working on WMD is a very serious matter, and I want to know if Hillary opposes the imminent pardon.
I am totally lost as I try to find an answer as to why the crowd heckled Mathews, who is a media-whore, granted, but again, the question was a normal one.

Personally, I think "Mayor Mike" only runs if Hillary gets the nomination.  That's the only way he can possibly win - plenty of disaffected people across the spectrum who don't want a continuation of the Bush era, but can't stomach Hillary.

He would clearly have a better shot at my state's EVs than Hillary would.  Thus, I'd probably vote for him.

I would also have no problem with a full Dem Congress and President Bloomberg.  We would like his judges, and I don't see him vetoing any of our priority legislation.  I bet he would run for re-election on the Dem ticket.

I knew it when I first heard it that it was going to be posted. I laughed so hard and then said to myself,

"Well, shet. He's right"

Good for Hillary... she expertly worked that in her favor.

She's far from my top choice.. but damn she's good.

Nice work by Hillary.

All of the candidates need to take it to these pundits and throw their stupid question back in their faces.

The question was only stupid if the answer was obvious.  But by her response it appears the answer was not so obvious and Chris had a legitimate reason to ask.  

Hillary is not winning to please the netroots. She's running to win the election. Everybody (even her opponents) concede that she's running a very effective campaign. Rather than just recognizing that in general, let's examine this particular interaction. First, she knew that she would be asked about a pardon, in this forum or otherwise. And she planned an approach to deflect the question that could get the crowds behind her, which she achieved brilliantly. Why deflect? Well, if she does come out and say, "keep the SOB in jail and throw away the key," then she knows that, come next debate, a moderator is going to compare this pardon to her husband's pardons, and the whole thing will be a mess. So she works to deflect the issue now. You might not like her non-answer, but the AFSCME delegates -- a labor audience, majority female, with large numbers of Blacks and Latinos -- just ate it up. And Hillary's appeal to these audiences, plus her skill at avoiding traps, is why she is doing so well in the polls (even if many in the netroots don't like her.)

As horsehit as this recent praising of and call for a return to the political center (i.e. of the Broder/Lieberman sort), one positive aspect of this is that it represents yet one more indication that conservatism as an ideology and political movement is dying if not dead among the general populace. These pundits may not have the courage and principle to genuinely embrace progressivism, still preferring to refer to it as the "far-left fringe", and its adherents as crazy hippies blogging in their pajamas. But in their embrace of phony centrism, they are, in effect, rejecting conservatism, in a sort of reverse-polarity triangulation. And that can't be a bad thing. They might not intend to, but in their own way they're moving the goalpost back towards the left. And it's up to us to move it even further leftward--and keep it there.

Far worse than Hardball scrapping their AFSCME coverage last night in favor of building up a Bloomberg candidacy was Keith Olberman trying to hype Obama's address at TBA as "going negative".  It was one thing to rightfully criticize the Punjab memo, but when Obama talking about how he opposed the War from the start is viewed as a negative attack, it's clear there's an editorial decision being made that is going to try to attach negative campaigning to any highlight of differences Obama makes.  This is especially disingenous when Obama doesn't even mention any other candidate and where intention is for positive action.  Here's the passage where Olberman accused Obama as going negative:

I am proud that I stood up in 2002 and urged our leaders not to take us down this dangerous path.  I've said it before and I'll say it again - this is a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged.  

So many of us knew this back then, even when it wasn't popular to say so.  

We knew back then this war was a mistake.  We knew back then that it was dangerous diversion from the struggle against the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th. We knew back then that we could find ourselves in an occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.  

But the war went forward.  And now, we've seen those consequences and we mourn for the dead and wounded.