For months, Michael Bloomberg has witnessed the success of a fellow big-city personality in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Now, the billionaire and former New York City mayor is reportedly laying the groundwork to join Donald Trump in the race for the White House.
However, there is one key difference: Bloomberg will never win.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg holds a large cup as he speaks to the media about the health impacts of sugar at Lucky's restaurant, which voluntarily adopted the large sugary drink ban, March 12, 2013 in New York City.
Credit: Getty Images
With all of the talk in recent days of "New York values," Bloomberg seems to fit the bill more accurately than Trump.
Bloomberg is too extreme for mainstream America.
His positions on gun control, his attacks on the free market, and his test run as a radical environmental activist all place him outside the realm of electability.
How do I know?
I was part of a team that defeated him at the ballot box over gun control in a battleground state, and I witnessed first hand the voters' reaction.
In 2013 citizens in Colorado pushed back on a Bloomberg-funded effort to force upon the people the strictest gun control in the nation. After getting caught calling the governor's office in after-hours calls to lobby for votes, then spending millions with his allies to defend the gun control bills, Bloomberg lost the election and three of the highest-ranking Democrats in the state lost their jobs.
Just as they were proven too extreme in Colorado, Bloomberg's positions on gun control are way out of step with the American people. (Nevermind that as mayor, Bloomberg enjoyed a full staff of armed bodyguards all while he was pushing for gun control.)
Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns fell apart after the Colorado Recalls. And his sequel organization, Everytown, has at times sputtered showing that the anti-gun mayor never quite recovered.
In fact, Bloomberg was so damaged by the whooping that Colorado voters gave him, he moved quickly to another favorite pet project of his: banning large sodas, or at least taxing them into hopeful oblivion.
Bloomberg fled the country and traveled to Mexico -- where he announced his goal to tax large sodas in the southern border country while claiming that sodas were the primary reason for obesity there.
Not the rich food. Nor the fried food. Nor the fact that according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, "an order of beef and cheese nachos has as much fat as 10 glazed Dunkin' Donuts, and a chile rellenos dinner has as much saturated fat as 27 slices of bacon."
Rather, sodas are the problem in Mexico according to Bloomberg.
Most commonly known for his "Big Gulp" ban, Bloomberg had outlawed large sodas in New York City when he was mayor. A judge later overturned the ban, ruling it unconstitutional.
Bloomberg stands by his attack on sodas and the free market. While some attribute the Mexican soda tax's success to lowered obesity, let's just say the ban on Big Gulps did not play well back home in the U.S.
Bloomberg's environmental policies are also equally out of step with the American people.
A billionaire in the spirit of environmental activist Thomas Steyer, Bloomberg has engaged in a do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do style of activism.
Appointed as a special United Nations envoy on climate change, Bloomberg has engaged in a war on coal and other energy industries.
However, like many other environmental activists, Bloomberg lectures others on energy consumption while hypocritically trotting 'round the globe on his private jet.
While Bloomberg might be interested in running for president, the populist America that supports Trump today would not support Bloomberg's anti-free market views and often hypocritical hand on unpopular issues.
In order to even consider a Bloomberg presidency, Americans would have to take a big, big gulp just to stomach the notion.
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