Another Third Party Boomlet

Yesterday, I suggested that Tom Friedman’s most recent column shows that the Obama campaign is in a panic.

When Friedman suggested that Michael Bloomberg show his patriotism by throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars on a quixotic enterprise, it was a Hail Mary pass thrown for the Obama campaign. 

If your only chance for victory lies in enticing a third party candidate into the race, you have serious problems.

Today, Morton Kondracke, Executive Editor of Roll Call and another important Washington Democrat, expresses his own wish for a third party candidate.

I do not know whether Kondracke is doing the work of the Obama re-election campaign or whether he is merely riffing off of an idea by Tom Friedman—question: which would be more depressing?—but he proposes an independent ticket headed by former Indiana senator Evan Bayh. He recommends that retiring Maine senator Olympia Snowe be enlisted as Bayh’s vice president.

Let’s call this another Hail Mary pass. It is even more far-fetched than the Bloomberg boomlet.

Why would anyone imagine that a Bayh/Snowe ticket would attract any votes at all? The two might compete for who is most boring, but that’s about as far as it would go.

I prefer Kondracke to Tom Friedman, but if this is the best he can do, the Obama campaign is in very big trouble.