Chuck Todd: Populist Third-Party Presidential Candidates Will Emerge In Spring

Chuck Todd didn't cautiously couch his prediction.  On today's Morning Joe, NBC's political director flatly forecast that third and/or fourth party presidential candidates will emerge in the Spring.  

Todd based his bold prediction on the theory that there is a hunger for populist candidates, and that populism is not the way Obama or Romney [his presumed Republican candidate] "roll." Video after the jump.

Watch Todd make his pull-no-punches prediction.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: And Chuck Todd, a conservative told me yesterday that another problem with Romney--and with Huntsman--is that they believe, and I do too--they believe that a conservative populist, running this year could, in the words of Hank Williams, set the forest on fire, light the trees on fire [Joe later corrected himself.  The song is "Setting The Woods On Fire."]

CHUCK TODD: You gotta get tough, you gotta get tough on Wall Street.  The problem for Romney is he's going to look like Wall Street . . . I think this is what's burning. This is why we're going to have a third, fourth party that's going to pop sometime in the Spring. Third or fourth party candidates.  

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Wow.

TODD: Because the dissatisfaction: Romney and Obama in their bones are not populists.  That's not how they run.  That's not how they roll.