Barack Obama is scheduled to give a big speech on the economy at 9:15 a.m. ET today, a push by his campaign to compete effectively on some of the bread-and-butter issues where Hillary Clinton has been shown to be ahead of him in many polls.

And here's a detail that should get a lot of attention: Obama will be introduced by none other than New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. It could get a lot of people asking if Bloomberg will be supporting Obama, now that he's completely ruled out any presidential aspirations of his own.

In a guest column in the New York Times, Mike Bloomberg has now confirmed yet again, but in more detailed terms, that he will not be running for president.

"I listened carefully to those who encouraged me to run, but I am not — and will not be — a candidate for president," Bloomberg writes. "I have watched this campaign unfold, and I am hopeful that the current campaigns can rise to the challenge by offering truly independent leadership. The most productive role that I can serve is to push them forward, by using the means at my disposal to promote a real and honest debate."

Bloomberg left open the possibility that he would endorse one of the current candidates for president, if he saw a candidate who "takes an independent, nonpartisan approach — and embraces practical solutions that challenge party orthodoxy."

This has already gotten some attention, but we wanted to flag it anyway. Today's Times has a good piece on the backlash that's growing towards Mike Bloomberg's suggestions that he may run or may not run for President.

We wanted to point you towards this priceless quote from Democratic strategist Robert Zimmerman, who is a Hillary supporter:

“I think it is becoming a very old story very fast. Mike Bloomberg has failed to make a case that he represents an independent movement, as opposed to a former Democratic liberal, former Republican, former Bush-backer running a campaign of opportunism.”

This really is the point. Bloomberg, who has criticized all the candidates for lacking policy specifics, has simply not said a darn thing that lets us place him in an ideological or policy sense. He is for "bipartisanship" in all its platitudinous glory, without telling us what policy ends he thinks should be accomplished with that bipartisanship.

Which raises another point: Bloomberg's condemnation of "partisanship" needs to be seen as an electoral strategy, rather than a governmental one. That's what he used to get around the Democratic Party in New York, and it's what he would use to get around the parties should he run for President. As Zimmerman says, this is all about opportunism, pure and simple.

Now why would Michael Bloomberg be doing this:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been receiving foreign policy briefing sessions on a wide variety of topics, providing the strongest indication yet that he is considering a run for the White House, the Huffington Post has learned.

The sessions, which were confirmed by multiple sources, have been conducted with Nancy Soderberg, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a Clinton Administration foreign policy adviser. One source described her as "Bloomberg's Condi."

A range of topics have been discussed, from non-proliferation to the defense budget, with a specific focus on the war in Iraq.

That really does suggest that he's seriously contemplating a run. One other thing we can conclude from this, meanwhile, is that Bloomberg apparently doesn't share Rudy's view that having been Mayor of New York is adequate preparation for the manifold foreign policy challenges a President faces. He apparently thinks you should learn something about the topic first.

A new poll from Newsweek shows that Hillary Clinton has yet to feel any pain in the national polls from this past week's debate. Hillary leads the Democrats with 43%, followed by Barack Obama at 24% and John Edwards with 12% — statistically unchanged from Newsweek's last poll back in August.

On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani continues to benefit from a heavily divided field. He has 30% support, followed by Fred Thompson at 15%, John McCain with 14%, Mitt Romney at 12%, and Mike Huckabee at 7%.

Hillary leads Rudy by a 49%-45% margin. In a three-way race with Mike Bloomberg, it comes out at Clinton 44%, Giuliani 38%, and Bloomberg 11%.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg this morning gave an interview to ABC News in which he really, truly, seriously appeared to rule out a Presidential run.

Here's what Bloomberg said:

"I'm going to fill out my term as mayor of the city of New York, and not run for president," he said. "But … I live in this country. I'm one of 300 million people and I think that I have an obligation to speak out."

Bloomberg in the past has said that he isn't running, but routinely stopped short of explicitly ruling out the possibility. Here, however, he said: "I'm going to...not run for President."

Right?

A new WNBC/Marist poll (no link available yet) finds New York City residents deem Mike Bloomberg a better mayor than Rudy Giuliani was, and it's by a pretty solid margin, too:

Who do you think has been the better mayor for New York City?

	Bloomberg	Giuliani
All	52%	39%
Democrats	60%	34%
Republicans	41%	50%
Independents	33%	56%

The only ethnic group in which Rudy tops Bloomberg is Latinos, who favor Rudy by a 60%-35% margin.

However, only 36% of New Yorkers want Bloomberg to run for president, compared to 54% who say he should not. And in a three-way race with Hillary Clinton, the city's Democratic inclination still prevails: Hillary 49%, Rudy 22%, Bloomerg 21%.

A lot of people have been writing of late about the meaninglessness of Michael Bloomberg's empty denunciations of partisanship and the predictable embrace of them by Beltway elites. But Jon Chait really nails it:

"Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology." So declared New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg upon renouncing his membership in the GOP last week. The problem, of course, is that people don't agree on what "real results" or "good ideas" are. Cutting taxes? Raising taxes? Funding stem-cell research? Banning stem-cell research? This is exactly why we have partisan battles in the first place.

You would think that anybody who failed to grasp this would be urged to study a high school civics textbook. Instead, Bloomberg is being urged to run for president and lauded for his statesmanship.

Bloomberg has thus become the most prominent example of what you could call partisanship scolds. These are people who believe that disagreement is the central problem in U.S. politics, that both parties are to blame in equal measure, and that rejecting party ties or ideology is synonymous with the demonstration of virtue. While partisanship scolds believe that they stand in bold contrast to Washington, they are probably more heavily represented among the Beltway elite than any other demographic.

This puts me in mind of one of the more irksome formulations of this sort, one frequently bandied about by Joe Lieberman: The notion that we should put the good of "country before party." Well, duh. Thing is, people who are partisans tend to think that the success of their party is the best way to ensure the success of the country. That's what makes them partisans in the first place.

There's a very simple reason that the partisanship scolds don't understand this: They're generally not interested in the actual policies being advocated by the folks they revere as nonpartisan heroes. Let's take David Broder as an example, since he's probably the ultimate partisanship scold. It's very clear from his paeans to various nonpartisan demigods such as Joe Lieberman that what Lieberman is actually advocatinghe isn't particularly interested in what Lieberman is actually advocating.

He's primarily interested in the theatrics of independence. In this sense, it's actually the partisanship scolds who are putting the empty idea of nonpartisanship before country.

A new batch of polls just out from SurveyUSA provides us with the first detailed snapshot we have yet of the state-by-state effect a Bloomberg candidacy would have on the 2008 Presidential race.

Bottom line: Bloomberg's impact depends entirely on who the Dem and GOP nominees are, but it's clear that in more cases, his entry actually flips the states from red to blue than the other way around.

One other interesting point: The polls suggest that the two candidates who would be most hurt in a general election by a Bloomberg entry are Mitt Romney and, surprisingly, Barack Obama. And Bloomberg flips states when either of those two are nominated — at least for now.

We have a detailed chart on exactly how Bloomberg's candidacy would affect the race in each state after the jump.

Read more »

An interesting new round of polls from SurveyUSA finds that an independent candidacy by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg would, well, not really matter that much at all or appreciably affect the outcome of the 2008 contest.

Bloomberg is at or around 10% in most of the states. But even with Bloomberg in the race, those states expected to go Democratic stay Dem. And those expected to go Republican stay Republican. Swing states, meanwhile, remain up in the air between the two parties. In short, it does not appear that Bloomberg currently presents any spoiler effect, let alone a chance of a winning.

Minnesota: Clinton (D) 48%, Giuliani (R) 37%, Bloomberg (I) 7%
Wisconsin: Clinton (D) 44%, Giuliani (R) 40%, Bloomberg (I) 10%
Oregon: Clinton (D) 44%, Giuliani (R) 38%, Bloomberg (I) 11%
Washington: Clinton (D) 42%, Giuliani (R) 41%, Bloomberg (I) 11%
Iowa: Clinton (D) 42%, Giuliani (R) 37%, Bloomberg (I) 11%
California: Clinton (D) 45%, Giuliani (R) 40%, Bloomberg (I) 10%
Massachusetts: Clinton (D) 47%, Giuliani (R) 37%, Bloomberg (I) 9%
New York: Clinton (D) 49%, Giuliani (R) 32%, Bloomberg (I) 15%
Alabama: Giuliani (R) 46%, Clinton (D) 39%, Bloomberg (I) 11%
Kentucky: Giuliani (R) 42%, Clinton (D) 41%, Bloomberg (I) 10%
Texas: Giuliani (R) 48%, Clinton (D) 34%, Bloomberg (I) 10%
Virginia: Giuliani (R) 45%, Clinton (D) 40%, Bloomberg (I) 9%
Kansas: Giuliani (R) 47%, Clinton (D) 36%, Bloomberg (I) 8%
New Mexico: Clinton (D) 45%, Giuliani (R) 41%, Bloomberg (I) 8%
Missouri: Clinton (D) 44%, Giuliani (R) 39%, Bloomberg (I) 10%
Ohio: Clinton (D) 47%, Giuliani (R) 41%, Bloomberg (I) 8%

Of course, things might change a bit if Mayor Mike were to sink half a billion dollars or so into TV ads in those states. But this is where things stand right now, at any rate.

Check this out: A new Rasmussen poll shows that an Independent candidacy for President by Mike Bloomberg would draw almost all its support away from the Republican nominee.

The poll asks respondents who they'd vote for in a hypothetical three-way race between Independent Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton and John McCain; it also runs the same numbers with Bloomberg, Hillary and Rudy Giuliani. In both cases, interestingly, Hillary's support holds steady at 46% — in line with other Rasmussen polls testing Hillary in two-way races — while both of the GOP candidates drop to 37%. Bloomberg is a distant third with eight or nine points, siphoned away from the Republican column.

Key footnote: Though Bloomberg became a Republican to run for Mayor in 2001, he is a longtime liberal Dem who's given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Dem candidates over the years — a fact that might alter the above findings once Republican voters learn of it. Meanwhile, this poll would seem to suggest — like other surveys — far more enthusiasm about their candidates among Dem voters than among Republican-leaning voters, who appear to be hungry for an alternative to their party's current candidates.

Wow, this is a surprising number: Hillary Clinton is not just beating Rudy Giuliani in his home state — and her adopted state — of New York, but is trouncing the former Mayor by over 20 points in a new poll. The survey, released today by Crain's New York Business, finds that Hillary is beating Rudy 53%-32%.

The poll has another eye-opening number, too — one that suggests New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has lots of work to do if he is serious about launching an Independent bid. It finds that if he were running as a third-party candidate against Hillary and Rudy, he'd languish in the single digits in New York, garnering a dismal seven percent of the vote. And if he can't get traction for his Presidential run in New York, where he's a popular Mayor, where could he find traction for it?