Forget about the endorsement for a second. Forget about the fact that, for all of Bloomberg's self-professed Independence, New York (and New York City in particular) is one of the bluest places in the country. That Nate Silver predicts with 100.00% certainty that New York's electoral votes will go to Obama. That same-sex marriage equality is one of Bloomberg's passions–and that, Obama, the single most prominent political leader in the world, emphatically endorsed gay marriage earlier this year ahead of inevitable history.
Just think about the triple entendre that is Bloomberg's statement: "Our climate is changing."
Our climate is changing: global warming is coming, finally, into much-needed focus as a hot topic of not just political interest but also enormous geopoliticosocial and economic ramifications depending on how we respond to it. The topic, notoriously absent during the presidential debates, is finally making front covers of widely circulated magazines.
Our climate is changing: tropical storm Sandy became, finally, a moment of unity for a nation that has rocked in turpid partisan waters for most of the last four years, with the nation's top Democrat and one of the nation's top Republican symbols coming together–emphatically again comes to mind–in a symbolic and practical display of much-needed cooperation, a moment that will forever etch into our collective consciousness the flesh-and-blood importance of big, well-prepared government.
Our climate is changing: our planet is literally exhausted by the exhaustive use of oil and the carbon exhaust that our disproportionately car-intensive transportation culture sweeps into the atmosphere as our atmosphere intensely weeps. For this precise reason, it's important, as Bloomberg duly notes, that Obama has taken serious steps like "pushing regulations that seek to curtail emissions from cars and power plants". In light of this, Obama, as the kind of President that steps up in moments when climate change affects the nation as viscerally and acutely as it arguably has this week, is indispensable as our leader.
The topical significance of that triple entendre–and how utterly irrelevant it makes Mitt Romney just days before the election–is the real story here, and the reason Obama deserved this surprising endorsement from Bloomberg.