Even Michael Bloomberg Supporters Are Worried a Run Would ?Hand the Nomination to Warren?

“There are obviously plenty of Democrats who are very excited about voting for the most progressive candidate, but what we have seen is there is a large number of Democrats who want to vote for the candidate with the best shot of winning.” Most important, it was no longer obvious to Bloomberg’s team, looking at data showing a weakened Biden — having faced constant attacks and questions about his durability and fitness to match up against Trump — was still that candidate. “The thinking is, ‘Does it look like Biden has imploded?’ And obviously it’s looked more and more that way recently,” added a New York power player close with the Bloomberg team.Biden’s team, of course, doesn’t see it this way, and its immediate concern was that Bloomberg’s entry would freeze the former VP’s already-lagging fundraising. Some big fish either didn’t immediately respond to the calls or told the Biden team to give them some more time — they now had to reconsider given the news.Bloomberg’s move to start getting his name on primary ballots isn’t a final decision on a full-scale campaign, but it is a new, public stage of an evolving conversation he has been having with supporters and allies for years, especially in the last two. And after the news broke, Bloomberg himself — notoriously not one for glad-handing — made a round of calls that would be expected of a presidential candidate, including to Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez and the chairmen of the state parties in Iowa and New Hampshire, operatives aware of the calls told New York.Still, even some of his closest ideological and business allies in New York and Washington aren’t sure just how seriously to take it yet, after almost none of them got any heads-up that Bloomberg was seriously reconsidering the race. “Until I hear Mike say, on the record, ‘I’m in,’ I won’t believe it,” another top New York City political operator close to Bloomberg’s team told me.Even if Bloomberg ultimately decides against a run, he’s already changed the dynamics of the race for some major candidates and moneymen. “The Bloomberg people are going to have to convince them to calm down.” A few minutes after we hung up, investor Leon Cooperman — who’s recently been attacking Warren like he did Obama in 2011 — said he’d back Bloomberg, and the next day Recode reported that Jeff Bezos had asked him to run earlier this year.But that plutocratic brand of exuberance has its limits. It hasn’t just given the populist left’s preferred candidates an easy applause line, a handful worried over the weekend, it may have cast yet another shadow over a Biden campaign that could use as much sunlight as possible these days.“I don’t see how this doesn’t hand the nomination to Warren,” sighed a Manhattan financier, a longtime Bloomberg supporter who’d tried nudging him toward running late last year and early in 2019. He continued, “I don’t see how this isn’t the most destructive thing he could possibly do.”Yet ANOTHER Democratic candidate may join the frayFormer Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts has told Democratic officials that he is considering making a last-minute entry into the 2020 presidential race, according to two Democrats with knowledge of the conversations, the latest evidence of how unsettled the party’s presidential primary is less than three months before the Iowa caucuses.Mr. Patrick has told party leaders that he doesn’t think any of the candidates running have established political momentum and that he thinks there is an opening for somebody who can unite both liberals and moderate Democrats, according to Democrats who have spoken to him.At the same time, Massachusetts Democrats close to Mr. Patrick have started to reach out to prominent party leaders in early nominating states to alert them that he may run, according to one Democrat who has received an inquiry.Top four bunched up at the top in NHPod Save America’s mayor from prison?Rudy Giuliani is considering re-entering the impeachment fray by launching a podcast to provide impeachment analysis of the public hearings in the House of Representatives scheduled for later this week.Giuliani was overheard discussing the plans with an unidentified woman while at a crowded New York City restaurant, Sant Ambroeus, over lunch on Saturday. According to the Nov. 8 poll, 4 percent of Democratic primary voters said the billionaire and former Republican would be their first choice for the party’s nomination to take on Trump next year — placing him above 10 candidates currently in the race.Haley lets 2024 voters know that she puts Trump over country, backs most of his foreign policy, and doesn’t think he should be impeachedTwo of President Trump’s senior advisers undermined and ignored him in what they claimed was an effort to “save the country,” former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley claims in a new memoir.Former secretary of state Rex Tillerson and former White House chief of staff John F.