isn't so much the man himself.
It's that many people have surely had enough of rich people exerting an outsized influence on US politics.
Half of the problem is that what billionaires think matters: that is, it matters beyond their contribution as a single person with a voice like anyone else's. It's fine that they have made oodles of money, and doubtless some people that make money are smart.
But why should anyone presume that a person should be permitted to dictate the conversation because they are rich? Are they smarter than the people who discover a scientific principle? Or than the author of a beautiful poem?
One point of democracy is that it isn't the same thing as plutocracy. Most folks prefer the notion that democracy offers the ideas of millions of people, and not of a few of them. A society organised around the interests of billionaires will tend to do things which billionaires want it to. But what if the structure which raises billionaire interests over those of everyone else is the problem.
Would Bloomberg take a decision which damages his own privileges? I think not. He is considering entering the race because he isn't seeing the sort of candidate he wishes to see. Or put another way, he fears Elizabeth Warren will lessen his importance and the importance of those like him. That is, he represents a class of people that wants to maintain itself. And I think the popularity of people like Sanders and Warren expresses the fact that many people are just sick of them.
This is why I suspect his candidacy is doomed. Even while I think he wouldn't be a terrible president.
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