Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is poised to seek the Democratic presidential nomination

Bil­lion­aire media mogul and for­mer May­or of New York Michael Bloomberg is report­ed­ly prepar­ing to enter the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry with­in days.

Accord­ing to his clos­est aides, although Bloomberg has not yet made an absolute deci­sion on run­ning, he has sent staffers to Alaba­ma in order to gath­er sig­na­tures so that he can qual­i­fy for that state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry (although it isn’t an ear­ly pri­ma­ry state, Alaba­ma has an ear­ly dead­line for entry into the race). In addi­tion, his team have begun con­tact­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic pow­er bro­kers like Gov­er­nor Gina Rai­mon­do of Rhode Island (the Chair of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion) and Har­ry Reid of Neva­da (a for­mer Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader).

While Bloomberg is a unique man, it is hard to see what dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures can make him stand out to vot­ers as a unique choice in the 2020 con­test: he is an old white man (like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and almost every oth­er pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in Unit­ed States his­to­ry), he is a bil­lion­aire with a pas­sion for cli­mate jus­tice (but so is Tom Stey­er) and an expe­ri­enced may­or (as are Pete Buttigieg and for­mer can­di­date Bill de Bla­sio, the cur­rent may­or of New York.)

Bloomberg seemed to rec­og­nize he did­n’t bring any­thing to a crowd­ed field in March of this year, when he defin­i­tive­ly declared that he would not be run­ning for the pres­i­den­cy. What has changed between March and November?

Accord­ing to Bloomberg’s team, the answer is that Joe Biden’s posi­tion in the pri­ma­ry looked unas­sail­able back in March, where­as now the for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent looks com­par­a­tive­ly weak. If Biden were to lose the nom­i­na­tion, Bloomberg is wor­ried that the like­ly win­ner – either Eliz­a­beth War­ren or Bernie Sanders – would be unable to beat Trump in the gen­er­al election.

A quick look at Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics polling aver­ages shows that both Sanders and War­ren would trounce Trump on the nation­al lev­el; they even beat him in cru­cial states like Wis­con­sin, Michi­gan and Pennsylvania.

A more like­ly rea­son for Bloomberg to take on Sanders and War­ren is that he oppos­es their pro­gres­sive views on eco­nom­ic and fis­cal issues. While Bloomberg is a lib­er­al on issues like gun respon­si­bil­i­ty, he is as con­ser­v­a­tive as they come on eco­nom­ic mat­ters. Pop­u­lar pro­gres­sive ideas such as Warren’s wealth tax would ever so slight­ly reduce the gigan­tic per­son­al for­tune he’s accumulated.

On paper, Bloomberg is a polit­i­cal force to be reck­oned with. He has decades-long rela­tion­ships with many of the most pow­er­ful fig­ures in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s estab­lish­ment, as well as his own media com­pa­ny, Bloomberg News, to spread his mes­sage. He is also stag­ger­ing­ly wealthy; with a net worth of $52 bil­lion, he makes even Tom Stey­er ($1.6 bil­lion) look like a pauper.

With that lev­el of per­son­al for­tune, he won’t face the kind of finan­cial chal­lenges that are cur­rent­ly beset­ting the Biden campaign.

Despite all that, Bloomberg has only a tiny chance of win­ning the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry. A recent Fox Noise Chan­nel poll found that, while 6% of Democ­rats def­i­nite­ly sup­port him, almost a third would nev­er vote for him no mat­ter what. He only has a net favor­a­bil­i­ty among Democ­rats of +11%, despite being one of the most well known politi­cians in the country.

Nei­ther Bloomberg’s ideas not his iden­ti­ty appear to be what the Demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­torate are look­ing for in a 2020 candidate.

In a con­test where debates have focused on inequal­i­ties and address­ing racial dif­fer­ences, Bloomberg seems ready to insis­tent­ly stick to his neolib­er­al eco­nom­ics and even defend the racist stop-and-frisk poli­cies of the NYPD while he was New York’s may­or. Of course, Joe Biden shares many of Bloomberg’s pol­i­cy posi­tions, but the Vice Pres­i­dent is more fond­ly viewed by mid­dle and low income voters.

In an elec­tion where the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers – no mat­ter their race, class or geo­graph­ic loca­tion – is to remove Don­ald Trump from the Oval Office, it seems incon­ceiv­able that they would turn to anoth­er New York bil­lion­aire, espe­cial­ly when they have the most diverse field of can­di­dates in Amer­i­can his­to­ry to choose a nom­i­nee from.