I guess I'm setting myself up to eat some crow if he starts surging but isn't the whole discourse around Bloomberg sort of faux-hyperbolic ? It hits all the buttons for leftists, I get that, him trying to but his way in is gross and he sounds like he has some really terrible opinions in general. But an oligarch riding his way into office even in enlightened Western democracies isn't exactly a novelty anymore and I'm a bit skeptical he's actually a contender...
Bloomberg has already surged nationally from around 5% he was stuck at to a 15% range that has kept him third since Biden lost the lead:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.htmlHe's not out of line with the Democratic Party writ large. He's more extreme than it on gun control, was likely more pro-LGBT until recently, arguably is more activist on climate change, for example. He's in the mainstream of the party on all sorts of shit that's why he's so easily stepping into Biden's freefall as they differ little on most things and Biden was once on the "left" of the party but decades in the Senate made him a fervent compromiser and "comprehensive"-iser.
He's definitely against the Bernie, and sometimes-Warren wing, but he's never been a "real" Republican outside of liking tax cuts. And openly supporting the War on Terror in its most aggressive forms rather than wanting to continue it "but smarter" like mainstream Democrats.
Where there's an important, and Esch touched on this, is the rhetoric, Bloomberg needs to stop Bernie's more clear rhetoric compared to an Obama/Biden.
What's even more important is that Bloomberg is 78, he's always wanted to run for President, this was the last opening he was going to get.