At a press conference this morning, I asked Bloomberg about the upcoming book from Doug Schoen, the pollster employed by Bloomberg during his two mayoral campaigns. The book's title seems to fit Bloomberg's message perfectly: “Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System.”

Although he called it a ridiculous question today, the mayor was more forthright when Brian Lehrer asked him about it earlier. "I don’t think that either national party stands for anything," Bloomberg said in that interview, which you can see here.

My ridiculous hunch (to go with my ridiculous question) is that a Huffington Post story about Bloomberg's use of a tutor for national and international issues was a signal of sorts that it's okay to ask him about policy now -- and that we should probably stop wasting our time seeking new sound bites of him beating up on the national parties.