Live-blogging the only Democratic debate in between Nevada and South Carolina

I'll be live-blogging the debate here. Keep reloading this post for more updates!

You should be able to watch it online on the CBS News website, starting at 8 Eastern.

As always, I'll be doing this without the benefit of a pause or rewind button, so any quotes I write down might not be word for word, but I'll try to keep them fairly accurate.

My mom, Ann Althouse, is also live-blogging the debate.

8:04 — Mike Bloomberg looks glum, walking out with his head down after his humiliating performance in the last debate.

8:05 — The unemployment rate is the lowest it's been for 50 years. So how will Bernie Sanders convince people to vote for him in November? He says "real wage increases" were "less than 1%" last year. That's a weak response — he's still admitting that wages are generally going up, even accounting for inflation.

8:07 — Bloomberg cuts in and says Putin is trying to get Bernie Sanders elected. [VIDEO]

8:08 — Elizabeth Warren's opening message: "Bernie is winning right now because the Democratic Party is a progressive party, and progressive ideas are popular — even if some people on this stage don't want to admit that!" But Warren says Sanders's team has "trashed" her for doing more hard work on health care than Sanders has.

8:11 — Joe Biden attacks Bernie Sanders for voting against the Brady Bill, and considering a 2012 primary challenge to President Obama.

8:12 — Bernie Sanders: "I'm hearing my name mentioned a little bit tonight! I wonder why!"

8:14 — Pete Buttigieg aggressively interrupts Sanders to say Sanders has said something "false" about Buttigieg's campaign — that he's mostly funded by billionaires. Billionaires have given less to Buttigieg's campaign than just the voters in Charleston, South Carolina.

8:17 — Buttigieg says Bloomberg's "stop and frisk" policy in NYC was "racist." But Buttigieg also has "humility," both because he's dealt with racial issues as a mayor, and because "there are 7 white people on this stage talking about race."

8:21 — Elizabeth Warren attacks Bloomberg for funding "right-wing" Senators, including one who ran against Warren herself. Warren makes a strong statement: "I don't care how much money he has. The core of the Democratic Party will never trust him.… He is the riskiest candidate standing on this stage." Bloomberg lamely responds by invoking September 11, and boasting (with no sense of irony) that he has "the resources" to win. [VIDEO]

8:25 — Warren brings up Bloomberg's nondisclosure agreements with some of his female employees, and there are loud boos from the audience. Bloomberg says he's released them from the NDAs, and "we just cannot continue to relitigate this every time!" Buttigieg points out: "If you get nominated,  you'll be litigating this all year!"

8:28 — Amy Klobuchar goes after Bernie Sanders for his embarrassing 60 Minutes interview.

8:32 — Buttigieg mocks the "incredible shrinking price tag" of Bernie Sanders's health plan. "I'll tell you what it adds up to … 4 more years of Donald Trump."

8:33 — Biden: "Bernie, in fact, hasn't passed much of anything."

8:34 — Biden and Tom Steyer are shouting at each other when Amy Klobuchar cuts in: "If we spend the next 4 months tearing our party apart, we're going to spend the next 4 years watching Donald Trump tearing this country apart!"

8:37 — Bernie Sanders: "Bloomberg has a strong and enthusiastic base of support. Problem is, they're all billionaires."

8:45 — Biden talks about "carnage on our street"! Why is that OK for Biden to say but it wasn't OK for President Trump to say?

8:50 — Pete Buttigieg to Bernie Sanders on guns: "How are you going to have a revolution if you won't even support a rule change?" Sanders responds: "I am proud that I have a D- grade from the NRA. If I'm elected president, it will get worse than that!"

8:53 — I like what Bloomberg is saying on charter schools, but he's bad at saying it because he has shifty eyes. He keeps looking to the side nervously.

8:56 — Pete Buttigieg says: "I'm a little biased on teachers, because I'm married to one. I get an education on education every day."

9:00 — Bloomberg pulls out some prepared sarcasm at his own expense, saying of the other candidates: "I'm surprised they showed up, because … after I did such a good job of beating them last week, I would've thought they'd be afraid to do that!" [VIDEO]

9:09 — Bloomberg is asked about his anti-obesity polices as mayor, like banning large sodas — would he support similar ideas as president? He says what's good for New York City isn't necessarily good for the whole country — "otherwise we'd have the Naked Cowboy everywhere."

9:12 — Amy Klobuchar is asked if Bernie Sanders is right to propose legalizing marijuana, which is weird since Klobuchar is also in favor of legalizing marijuana! Seems like the CBS News staff just didn't do the research.

9:14 — Bloomberg seems to be the only one who's against fully legalizing marijuana. He'd merely decriminalize possession of small amounts while we keep studying it.

I thought the same thing my mom wrote in her live-blog:

I got bored. There's a lot of recitation of proposals, not so much attacking each other. I'm not going to try to provide you with notes on that.

9:34 — Pete Buttigieg (who I support) has been talking over Bernie Sanders a lot tonight, which seems like a desperate attempt to drown him out while he's winning — or maybe a reaction against the last debate's moderators who kept not letting him defend himself against attacks.

9:43 — Bernie Sanders is asked if he's not pro-Israel enough, and if he'd move our embassy back to Tel Aviv (after Trump moved it to Jerusalem). Sanders dodges the embassy question, but says: "I'm very proud of being Jewish. I actually lived in Israel for some months.… We have to have a policy that reaches out to the Palestinians and the Americans [sic]."

9:48 — Biden stops when the moderator calls time, but then Biden questions himself: "Why am I stopping? No one else stops! There's my Catholic school training."

9:58 — Each candidate is asked "the biggest misconception about you." Amy Klobuchar: "The biggest misconception is that I'm boring!"

10:00 — Bernie Sanders: "Misconception is that the ideas I'm talking about are radical.… Nelson Mandela said: 'Everything is impossible until it happens.'"

10:01 — Elizabeth Warren says: "One misconception is that I don't eat very much. In fact, I eat all the time!"

10:02 — Pete Buttigieg: "The biggest misconception is that I'm not passionate.… Some say unflappable. I don't think you want a president who's flappable." Maybe he read my endorsement of Buttigieg, which said: "He presents himself as unflappable.…"

So who won and lost? This and this piece both say Pete Buttigieg was one of the winners, and Bloomberg was one of the losers. But they disagree about whether Bernie Sanders won or lost.

UPDATE: Biden lied, and Klobuchar was afraid Steyer was going to hit her.

The tragedy of the commons and vote-splitters losing to Bernie Sanders

Now that Bernie Sanders has won 2 of the first 3 states (Pete Buttigieg seems to have narrowly won in Iowa's delegates, but the results are still being disputes), we're seeing reports like this:

The basic logic has never been in question: If Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Tom Steyer all stayed in the race, they would continue splitting the delegates needed for the nomination while Sanders built up a commanding plurality.

Many of the candidates themselves agreed, and had started saying so in recent days. Some Bloomberg aides have called hosts of recent Biden fundraising events to dress them down for effectively boosting Sanders, according to Democrats familiar with the conversations.

And before last week’s debate, a Bloomberg campaign memo warned, “If Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar remain in the race despite having no path to appreciably collecting delegates on Super Tuesday (and beyond), they will propel Sanders to a seemingly insurmountable delegate lead.”

The next day, Buttigieg’s team shot back a warning that Bloomberg “will propel Sanders to a seemingly insurmountable delegate lead,” and then, later that day, Warren’s top surrogate, Julián Castro, called on Bloomberg to “drop out now,” too.

But the day after a decisive Sanders victory in Nevada, his rivals are all intent on staying in. Given the general agreement among anti-Sanders moderates that the field needs to shrink, why won’t anyone drop out?

To start, none of the candidates want to get out before any of their peers, if they can still conceive of some sliver of a path to victory.… [E]ach camp acknowledges that the party isn’t split into clear pro- and anti-Sanders lanes like many pundits imagine. After all, the Vermont senator is widely popular in the party, so he would likely continue to pick up a substantial share of support from any candidates who stepped aside.

Still, all the campaigns are convinced they are the one that’s best positioned to take on Sanders one-on-one. Some of the Biden donors, for example, told the Bloomberg aides calling to scold them that the former mayor is hardly one to talk if he’s accusing Biden of helping Sanders.

Beyond all this, there’s no organized effort to shrink the field, and none is coming.

“People have this idea — and Sanders stokes this — that there’s a Democratic establishment that’s meeting and figuring these things out. [The truth is] there’s a bunch of people who have different interests,” one top party operative explained after Sanders’s wide margin of victory in Nevada became clear.…

Klobuchar, for one, has been the subject of hushed speculation that she’s aiming to win enough delegates in upcoming contests in her home state of Minnesota and neighbors like North Dakota to be influential at the convention. But in Fargo on Sunday, she insisted she’s still trying to win, comparing her campaign to Bill Clinton’s, which also didn’t win any statewide contests until Super Tuesday.

Warren, meanwhile, has been trying to position herself as a Sanders alternative by becoming the field’s foremost Bloomberg attacker, even as a disappointing result in Nevada makes her road to victory look especially daunting.

Biden, too, has a tough path ahead, but is convinced a clear win in South Carolina could set him up as the non-Sanders portion of the party’s best bet.

And Buttigieg, who effectively tied Sanders in Iowa and came in second in New Hampshire, is using those results and his recent attacks on Sanders to claim that he is the obvious choice. “Pete has shown he’s the only candidate who can beat Sanders. In the first two contests so far, Pete is the only candidate who provides any real competition,” read his campaign’s postdebate (but pre-Nevada caucus) memo.

If any one candidate is facing the pressure more than the others, though, it’s Steyer. The California billionaire has yet to win a delegate, but he’s polling in third in South Carolina on the back of his massive investments (of money and time) there. Steyer’s critics argue that he has no shot at winning the nomination, and that his double-digit support in the state must be keeping Biden’s down. If he were to drop out, their theory goes, Biden might win the next primary by a comfortable margin instead of wrestling for it with Sanders.

Steyer, though, has consistently dismissed this idea.…

“People are lying now about their ability to win, what they’re actually in the race for. If people keep lying for the next nine days, we’re going to end up in a position where Sanders is probably going to be the nominee by default. And people are going to say, ‘What happened?,’” [a Democratic strategist said]. “You were faking it for all of February. That’s what happened.”

Wikipedia says this on "the tragedy of the commons":

The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action.…

The "tragedy of the commons" is often cited in connection with sustainable development, meshing economic growth and environmental protection.… It has also been used in analyzing behavior in the fields of economics, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, game theory, politics, taxation and sociology.…

The commons dilemma is a specific class of social dilemma in which people's short-term selfish interests are at odds with long-term group interests and the common good.[35] In academia, a range of related terminology has also been used as shorthand for the theory or aspects of it, including resource dilemma, take-some dilemma, and common pool resource.

ADDED: A reader questioned whether this is really a tragedy of the commons problem, since only one of the Democratic candidates can end up winning the nomination. I responded on Facebook:

If you define "tragedy of the commons" so strictly that it applies only where every single person in the system is demonstrably worse off, then it's an open question whether there's a tragedy of the commons going on here. For instance, Klobuchar could be worse off for staying in and causing the nomination to go to Sanders. Sanders is unlikely to pick Klobuchar as a running mate or for any other position. If Klobuchar dropped out today and caused Buttigieg to win the nomination, that could be better for Klobuchar, since Buttigieg would be more likely than Sanders to choose Klobuchar as a running mate or for something else (their occasional tiffs would be more easily smoothed over than the epic Obama vs. Clinton battle of 2008, which didn't stop Obama from choosing Clinton as Secretary of State). If Klobuchar could become Vice President at age 60, she'd become more likely to end up being president than if she just stays in the Senate.

If instead you use a somewhat flexible definition of "tragedy of the commons," it very much applies to this situation. There are millions of Democrats involved with this in one way or another. There's no way to prove that every one of them who isn't named Sanders is going to be worse off if the other candidates keep splitting the vote. But if we look more broadly at whether it'll be good for Democrats in general, we can see a tragedy of the commons dynamic in the way Buttigieg/Bloomberg/Biden/Klobuchar/Steyer keep pursuing their individual interest in keeping their campaigns going in a way that collectively reduces the chances of a Democrat replacing Trump in January.

Live-blogging the first 2020 debate with Bloomberg

Mike Bloomberg is finally going to debate other Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination tonight, and I'll be live-blogging the debate. Keep reloading this post for more updates.

As always, I'll be writing down quotes without a pause or rewind button, so they might not be word for word, but I'll try to keep them reasonably accurate.

9:03 — Why is Bernie Sanders's "revolution" a better bet than Bloomberg's centrism? Sanders says Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk policy "went after" black and Hispanic Americans "in an outrageous way."

9:04 — Bloomberg starts on a negative note; "I don't think there's any chance of the Senator [Sanders] beating Trump.… If he is the candidate, we will have Donald Trump for another 4 years, and we can't stand that." Bloomberg gives the example of Sanders wanting to take people's health plans away from them.

9:05 — Without being asked a question or mentioned, Elizabeth Warren jumps in and says "we're running against" someone who calls women "fat broads and horse-faced lesbians." She's not talking about Trump — she's talking about Bloomberg! "Americans take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another." [VIDEO]

9:06 — Amy Klobuchar (my second choice) says Bloomberg "thought that 3 of us should get out of the way." "I've been told many times to step aside. And I'm not gonna do that now." (Bloomberg surrogates wrote a memo suggesting that Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Biden should drop out to clear the way for Bloomberg to defeat Sanders.)

9:07 — Bloomberg doesn't directly respond to any of those attacks, and instead makes his pitch: "I'm a mayor. I know how to run the biggest, most diverse city in the country." And he brought back New York City after September 11.

9:08 — Joe Biden also goes after Bloomberg over step-and-frisk, and says Obama/Biden tried to stop it.

9:09 — Pete Buttigieg (who I've endorsed) calls Sanders and Bloomberg "the two most polarizing figures on this stage." "Let's put forward somebody who's actually a Democrat!" Another good line from Buttigieg: "We shouldn't have to choose between somebody who wants to burn this party down, and somebody who wants to buy this party out." This leads to some harsh back and forth between Buttigieg and Sanders.

9:14 — Bernie Sanders on his supporters: "We have over 10 million people on Twitter, and 99.9% of them are decent human beings.… And if there are a few people who make ugly remarks … I disown those people." Buttigieg challenges Sanders: "We did this pattern arise? Why is it especially the case about your supporters? … Leadership is not just about policy. Leadership is also about how you motivate people to treat other people."

9:19 — Sanders promises he'll never "reduce" any Americans' health plans, but only "expand" them.

9:20 — Warren starts attacking almost everyone. First she says Buttigieg paid "consultants ... to paper over a thin version of a plan that would leave millions of people unable to pay for their health care. It's not a plan, it's a PowerPoint. And Amy's plan is even less — it's a Post-It note!" Then Warren even attacks Sanders over his plan!

9:21 — Buttigieg defends his choice of apps: "I'm more of a Microsoft Word guy!" On the substance: "The idea that people don't know what's good for them is exactly the kind of condescension that makes people skeptical."

9:27 — Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both directly attack Pete Buttigieg by name, at length, but moderator Chuck Todd inexplicably doesn't give Buttigieg a chance to respond even though Buttigieg keeps asking to.

9:29 — Bloomberg says "the one thing" he's "worried about" or "embarrassed about" in his time as mayor is "stop and frisk." "It got out of control. When I discovered that we were doing many, many, too many stop and frisks, we cut them by 95%." He talked to "kids who got stopped" and "tried to learn."

9:30 — Biden: "It's not whether [Bloomberg] apologized or not. It's the policy. And the policy was abhorrent." Bloomberg opposed Obama's decision to send people to monitor the policy.

9:32 — Bloomberg: "If we took off everybody on this panel who was wrong on criminal justice at some time in their careers, there'd be nobody left."

9:33 — Chuck Todd questions Klobuchar about police shootings when she led a Minnesota prosecutor's office; none of the police were prosecuted. Klobuchar says they all "went to a grand jury.… Now I believe that prosecutors should handle those cases themselves."

9:36 — Buttigieg associates Sanders with Trump in that they've both withheld their medical records. "Everybody on this stage should be willing to get a physical and put out the results." Then Buttigieg says Sanders should "level with" us on his health-care plan and his own health.

9:40 — Mike Bloomberg is asked why he's said he'll release his tax returns later, when people are voting now. "It just takes us a long time! Unfortunately, I make a lot of money! … They'll be out in a few weeks.… Remember, I only entered this race a few weeks ago!"

9:42 — Bloomberg is asked about allegations that he's made "sexually suggestive" comments about female employees, like: "I would do you in a second." He doesn't directly address that, but generally talks about the policies in his company." Warren has a clever response: I hope you heard what his defense was: "I've been nice to some women!" [VIDEO] Warren asks Bloomberg if he'll release women who've sued him from their nondisclosure agreements. "None of them have accused me of doing anything other than they didn't like a joke I told." Bloomberg says they wanted to sign those agreements. Warren comes back: "Are the women bound by being muzzled by you?" Biden backs up Warren: "It's easy — all the mayor has to do is say, 'You are released!'" Somehow, Biden ends up going over to Buttigieg and grabbing his arm.

Ann Althouse (my mom) says:

Bloomberg blew his chance to make a decent first impression. He’s dull and he looks like death.

9:47 — Bernie Sanders brings up Bloomberg's history as a Republican: "Bloomberg in 2004 supported George W. Bush for president." And Bloomberg said we should cut Social Security and not raise the minimum wage.

9:48 — Amy Klobuchar is asked about an interview when she recently admitted she didn't know the name of Mexico's president. Moderator: "Shouldn't the next president know about one of our largest trading partners?" Klobuchar: "I don't think that momentary forgetfulness reflects what I know about Mexico." She gives herself another quiz: "Who is the president of Honduras? Hernández!" Buttigieg goes after her: "You're on the committee that does border security. You're on the committee that oversees trade." Klobuchar: "Are you trying to say that I'm dumb?" [VIDEO]

10:03 — After a commercial break, they're talking climate change, and it's getting pretty technical, with discussions of mining specific minerals, and some confusing references to an energy facility in Nevada. Warren tries to broaden it and make it more relatable: "This isn't a controversial thing to say in the country, but it is controversial in Washington: I believe in science. We are going to increase, tenfold, our investment in science."

10:19 — Sanders and Bloomberg spar over which one of them caused billionaires to pay lower tax rates than middle-class people.

10:20 — Klobuchar is asked about Bernie Sanders's statement that "billionaires should not exist." Klobuchar: "I believe in capitalism.… I'm not gonna limit what people make."

10:21 — Sanders: "Mike Bloomberg owns more wealth than the bottom 125 million Americans. That's wrong! That's immoral!" Bloomberg responds dryly: "I can't speak for all billionaires. I've been very lucky.… I'm giving almost all of it away."

10:25 — Bloomberg on Warren's wealth tax: "It's ridiculous! We're not going to throw out capitalism! It was called communism, and it didn't work!"

10:27 — Sanders: "We are living, in many ways, in a socialist society right now. The problem is … we have socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the very poor." Bloomberg responds to Sanders with an ad hominem: "The best-known socialist in the country is a millionaire who owns 3 houses!" Sanders starts to defend himself by saying as a Senator he works in Washington. Bloomberg quips: "That's the first problem!" Sanders explains that he has separate homes in Washington, DC and Burlington, Vermont, plus he has a summer home.

10:33 — Elizabeth Warren: "Amy and Joe's hearts are in the right place, but we can't be so eager to be liked by Mitch McConnell that we forget how to fight Republicans." As soon as she mentions McConnell, Amy Klobuchar says: "Oh my God!" Biden: "Mitch McConnell has been the biggest pain in my neck for a long, long time!"

10:44 — Buttigieg calls out Klobuchar for voting to confirm a Trump appointee who designed the family separation policy, and for voting to make English the national language. Klobuchar snarks back: "I wish everyone was as perfect as you, Pete!" More from Klobuchar: "You have not been in the arena doing that work. You've memorized a bunch of talking points." Buttigieg retorts: "I'm used to Senators telling mayors that Senators are more important than mayors." [VIDEO starting after 2:50]

10:48 — Chuck Todd asks everyone what should happen if no one has a majority of delegates by convention time. Everyone vaguely says the process should work its way out, except for Bernie Sanders, the only one to make a definitive statement: "The person who has the most votes should be the nominee."

10:54 — Bloomberg uses his closing statement to preview how he'd challenge Trump in the general election: "This is a management job, and Donald Trump's not a manager. This is a job where you need teams, and he doesn't have teams."

10:57 — Elizabeth Warren, who seems to be losing her voice: "Of all the people on this stage, I've been a politician for the shortest amount of time, but I've been fighting for families the longest amount of time."

10:59 — Biden says they're in Las Vegas, "the site of the most significant mass murder in American history." (Well, with one minor exception…)

Mediaite has collected Twitter reactions to Bloomberg's "disastrous" debate night:

• I’m at a debate watch party at a Bloomberg campaign office in Virginia. People are in visible pain watching this exchange with Warren. Overheard: "I’m afraid Mike’s not coming off so well." — Olivia Nuzzi

• Bloomberg brought a wallet to a gun fight tonight

• Amy Klobuchar is about to prosecute Elizabeth Warren for murdering Mike Bloomberg.

• Bloomberg is weak - and he comes across as nervous too. If he didn’t have money, he wouldn’t be within miles of this stage. — Ari Fleischer

• bloom more like wilt

• BREAKING: Bloomberg offers NDAs to every debate viewer — Trevor Noah

President Bloomberg?

Hide your soda… Hide your salt shakers…

Mike Bloomberg is seriously considering running for the Democratic nomination for president.

Bloomberg was a Democrat before he got elected Mayor of New York City as a Republican. After being mayor, he rejected the whole idea of partisan labels, but then last year he registered as a Democrat.

Bloomberg would be the first Jewish president.

If he wins, Bloomberg will turn 79 years old less than a month after being inaugurated; he was born on Valentine's Day 1942. So if he served a full 4-year term, he'd spend most of his presidency in his 80s. No sitting president has ever been in his 80s, and the oldest president ever when first inaugurated was just 70.

President Bloomberg would beat the record set by his predecessor, Donald Trump, as the richest president ever. Bloomberg's net worth has been estimated to be around $50 billion.

And I'm certainly looking forward to fair and balanced coverage of the Bloomberg campaign by Bloomberg…

(Photo of Bloomberg from Wikimedia Commons.)

Does it matter how much salt Mayor Bloomberg puts on his food?

The New York Times reported yesterday:

HE dumps salt on almost everything, even saltine crackers. He devours burnt bacon and peanut butter sandwiches. He has a weakness for hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and fried chicken, washing them down with a glass of merlot. ...

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has become New York City’s nutritional nag, banning the use of trans fats, forcing chain restaurants to post calorie counts and exhorting diners to consume less salt. Now he is at it again, directing his wrath at sugary drinks in a new series of arresting advertisements that ask subway riders: “Are you pouring on the pounds?”

But an examination of what enters the mayoral mouth reveals that Mr. Bloomberg is an omnivore with his own glaring indulgences, many of them at odds with his own policies. And he struggles mightily to restrain his appetite. ...

[H]e is obsessed with his weight — so much so that the sight of an unflattering photo of himself can trigger weeks of intense dieting and crankiness, according to friends and aides. ...

Under his watch, the city has declared sodium an enemy, asking restaurants and food manufacturers to voluntarily cut the salt in their dishes by 20 percent or more, and encouraging diners to “shake the habit” by asking waiters for food without added salt.

But Mr. Bloomberg, 67, likes his popcorn so salty that it burns others’ lips. (At Gracie Mansion, the cooks deliver it to him with a salt shaker.) He sprinkles so much salt on his morning bagel “that it’s like a pretzel,” said the manager at Viand, a Greek diner near Mr. Bloomberg’s Upper East Side town house.

Not even pizza is spared a coat of sodium. When the mayor sat down to eat a slice at Denino’s Pizzeria Tavern on Staten Island recently, this reporter spotted him applying six dashes of salt to it.

A health tip sheet from the mayor’s office tells New Yorkers to “drink smart” by choosing water, even though Mr. Bloomberg has a three- to four-cup-a-day coffee habit.

“I can count on two hands the number of times I have seen him drink water,” said one dining companion ...

This does seem to support Megan McArdle's theory that elites who profess concern over the supposed obesity epidemic are really just projecting their own eating disorders onto the masses.

On the other hand, I find it a little disturbing that the Bloomberg piece is even considered a news story. It reminds me of how people love to point out that Al Gore and Thomas Friedman don't do the best job of minimizing their own carbon emissions. But how does that undermine their ideas about what's in store for the planet? Whether you agree or disagree with their views on climate change, their personal habits are a distraction from the real issues.

We have clashing expectations for politicians. It's politically poisonous for them to show any enthusiasm for arugula, endives, or dijon mustard, yet they're not supposed to eat too much fast food. The article is illustrated with a photo of Bloomberg eating a slice of cheese pizza (part of a whole "slideshow" of Bloomberg eating food), but people would be more critical if the mayor of NYC didn't go around eating pizza. If he had an impeccably healthy diet, people would criticize him for being a fanatical health nut trying to impose his personal regimen on the whole city.

The Bloomberg article is currently one of the "most blogged" and "most emailed" NYT articles. Of course, part of why so many people are talking about it is that it's just funny, and it lets bloggers use headings like: "Bloomberg to NYC: 'Stop Eating All My Salt.'" But are people truly concerned about Bloomberg's hypocrisy?

I suspect we're quietly gleeful at the chance to see our elected officials show that they're flawed, human, impetuous. It might not be far off from what happened to Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Mark Sanford, et al. For some reason, we're vaguely titillated by the idea of a politician who's unable to resist temptation.