On Thursday, reporters learned that former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is preparing to enter the Democratic primary. Scores of Democratic donors rejoiced at the news, and tens of families in the Hamptons erupted in cheers. In this era of increasing racial diversity, gender equality and rising populist anger, the Democratic primary clearly needed a septuagenarian white male billionaire to enter the race. Thank God Bloomberg is here to save the day!

Snark aside, Bloomberg 2020 is a bad idea. Polls suggest that Democrats neither want nor need a Bloomberg candidacy, and his strategy seems seriously flawed. Democratic donors have been sounding the alarm about their front-runners, but even if they’re right, Democrats already have better options than Bloomberg in the race.

Real-life, non-million-dollar-donor Democrats are happy with the candidates they already have. In July, Pew Research Center found that 65 percent of Democrats had a “good” or “excellent” impression of the candidates running for the Democratic nomination, 25 percent said their sense was that the field was fair, and only 5 percent had a “poor” impression.

By historical standards, those are excellent numbers. In 2015, only 51 percent had an unambiguously positive impression of the field, and in 2003 just 44 percent did. Democrats are about as happy with the field as they were in 2007, when Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were leading the Democratic primary and the party was on its way to a landslide victory. According to a Economist/YouGov poll, only 22 percent of registered Democrats who plan to vote in primaries wished they had more choices, and Pew found that 63 percent of Democrats are excited about several of the party’s candidates.

Joe Biden’s allies are becoming increasingly concerned that a Mike Bloomberg candidacy could take votes away from the former vice president and help Sen. Elizabeth Warren win the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Bloomberg’s political aides confirmed that he’s again considering entering the 2020 race, after he decided against it in March. Top Bloomberg advisor Howard Wolfson said Thursday that the billionaire former New York mayor is “increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well-positioned” to defeat President Donald Trump next year.

Biden told reporters on Friday that he welcomes Bloomberg, a fellow moderate, into the race. Yet several of his supporters see the former mayor’s move as potentially giving an edge to Warren, a liberal populist.

“This hurts Biden tremendously,” said one of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s outside advisors. Cuomo has encouraged his vast donor network to back the former vice president. “Even if he doesn’t get it,” this person added, “the whole thing plays that Biden is weak. It cements in people’s minds that Biden can’t make it work.”

Imagine you’re Pete Buttigieg. You had the best October of any candidate in the Democratic presidential race. On September 15, you trailed Joe Biden in Iowa by more than 20 points and both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders by at least 10. Kamala Harris was beating you, too. Now, by some measures, you’re in second place, a few points below Warren. You’re effectively pounding her on health care, because most Democrats prefer your comparatively modest reforms to her more radical ones. And you’re finding creative ways to imply that she’s unelectable—an attack that’s been buttressed in recent days by alarming high-profile polls about her weakness against Trump in battleground states.

Things are looking up. Until Michael Bloomberg comes along.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Bloomberg was “actively preparing to enter the Democratic presidential primary.” Sources in his camp tell reporters he’s alarmed about Warren, whose rise has elicited near-panic on Wall Street and whose ability to beat Trump in a general election Bloomberg is said to doubt. But Warren is no longer rising. As Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight recently noted, her “polls have leveled off” in the early-primary states. In national surveys, her numbers have dipped.

A Bloomberg candidacy could give Warren her mojo back. What could be better for the Massachusetts senator, who has built her candidacy on the claim that plutocrats control America’s government, than to run against a billionaire 51 times over who keeps slamming her proposed wealth tax, which more than 80 percent of Democrats support. By last night, Warren’s campaign was already fundraising off a possible Bloomberg candidacy. Ironically, the former New York mayor is empowering the very forces that he means to thwart.

(snip) The Warren camp appears gleeful. Buttigieg’s campaign is sullenly silent. Within hours of the news that Bloomberg might run, Warren had welcomed him, via tweet, to the race. On his Twitter feed, Buttigieg had said nothing at all.

BILL GATES WOULD PAY $6.379 BILLION NEXT YEAR UNDER ELIZABETH’S WEALTH TAX.

Bill Gates has a net worth of $107,000,000,000.

Don’t worry too much about Bill Gates - if history is any guide, if billionaires do nothing other than invest their wealth in the stock market, it’s likely that their wealth will continue to grow.

Elizabeth’s wealth tax, which only impacts America’s 75,000 wealthiest families, would generate enough revenue to cover universal child care, quality public education, forgive student loan debt, provide free public college, and help finance Medicare for All.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday accused Apple of "throwing pennies at a housing crisis" that it "helped create" after the tech giant announced it will spend $2.5 billion on affordable housing in California.

The presidential candidate released a statement ripping Apple's “hypocrisy” and saying he would require large companies to pay “their fair share” in order to make “investments that guarantee Americans affordable housing.”

"Apple's announcement that it is entering the real estate lending business is an effort to distract from the fact that it has helped create California's housing crisis – all while raking in $800 million of taxpayer subsidies, and keeping a quarter trillion dollars of profit offshore, in order to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes," Sanders said in the release.

The Vermont senator in September released his $2.5 trillion "Housing for All" plan, which he says would provide housing for all U.S. residents funded by a wealth tax on the top one-tenth of 1 percent of income earners. Sanders said his plan would address “the twin crises of affordability and homelessness" that "have reached a breaking point.”

Apple announced earlier Monday it would spend $2.5 billion on affordable housing in California to be “part of the solution” to the “unsustainable” direction of housing in the tech organization’s home state. The company will work with the state government to provide the funds.