Politico
now has a piece up that's the best thing I've read on Bloomberg's latest shift.
Quote:Bloomberg’s data gurus first noticed a sharp uptick in Democrats’ obsession with unseating Trump around Sept. 20. That’s when news broke that the president appeared to improperly threaten to withhold aid to Ukraine if the country didn’t open an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter.
Democratic leaders nationally embraced impeachment, and so did Bloomberg. He had been opposed to impeachment but then started to see a path to the nomination open for him — albeit an unorthodox one in which he would focus on the Super Tuesday states and largely bypass the crucial first four voting states.
“The data shifted after impeachment. Democrats were always focused on electability, but after Ukraine that impulse became even stronger. And the current field is not well-poised for success,” said Bloomberg’s adviser, Howard Wolfson, in explaining how the collision of forces caused Bloomberg to rethink his decision not to run.
I don't see any reason to doubt Bloomberg's zest to get Trump out of office. He's undoubtedly far more familiar with Trump's long history of corruption than any of us would be. And there's no question that many of his initiatives while in office and after (eg gun control) appeal to most of us on the left. But there's a LOT of other stuff that would rule him out too.
I don't see a realistic path for him. He's not going to go third party (I'm happy to make a substantial wager with anyone on this) because he and his people grasp that the Dems will suffer from that and that it could surely swing the election to Trump.
I think the greater danger here would fall out from the mainstream media's natural tendencies to conceptualize the current "center" as the safest position to write about and to tacitly support. In this framing, a Warren or a Sanders will be set in contrast and portrayed (in a knee-jerk, unthinking manner) as extreme and dangerous. That, of course, will be precisely the main thrust of right wing narrative.