Over the weekend Michael Bloomberg’s people floated a trial balloon in the form of a long  New York Times piece setting out the efforts he is making to explore an independent candidacy for president.

If the piece’s opaque sourcing and strategically placed quotes from Ed Rendell – a longtime Clinton supporter who favors a Bloomberg candidacy – didn’t mark it as a Bloomberg-prompted effort, something else did.   The piece passed without a mention over the idea (invariably mentioned in connection with the prospect of a Bloomberg run in 2008) that Bloomberg’s identity as a self-described divorced Jewish New Yorker is an obstacle to him in national politics.

It’s as if with Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish and speaks in a distinct Brooklyn accent, polling strongly in Iowa and New Hampshire, somebody in Bloomberg’s office said: Hey, maybe Sanders has shown that at long last it’s a non-issue.  

In the scenario set out in the Times, Bloomberg would be prompted to enter the race if Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

Were that to happen, and were Bloomberg to enter the presidential campaign, it would unfold in a way out of a Michel Houllebecq novel. You’d have not one but two Jewish candidates (the Democrat Sanders and the independent Bloomberg) running against a Latino evangelical (Ted Cruz) and a nominal Christian (Donald Trump) who has proposed a ban on Muslim immigrants to the United States.   You’d have a New York billionaire real estate titan running against a New York billionaire media titan who is (as Seth Lipsky points out in Ha'aretz) ten times as rich.   You’d have a Democratic-minded Jewish independent who champions the money culture running against an independent-minded Jewish Democrat who excoriates the money culture.  

Which would be more historic: the first female president, or the first Jewish president?  It’s hard to say.   But it can be said that the prospect of the two Jewish presidential candidates stepping up to oppose the frank anti-Muslim, anti-minority rhetoric of Trump’s campaign is very, very appealing.

Here (via Ha'aretz) is Bloomberg speaking on a New York City subway platform in 2008:

“To those who are wailing against immigration, to those politicians who, all of a sudden, have embraced xenophobia, I say: open your eyes,” the mayor said. “Take a look behind me. This is what makes America great. This is New York City. This is freedom. This is compassion, and democracy, and opportunity.”

The photograph shows Michael Bloomberg leaving the White House after meeting President Obama about gun control in 2013.