Who likes Mike?

In an election year in which primary voters in both parties seem to be racing for the torches and pitchforks --  unhappy about income inequality, or America's changing demographics, and everything in between --, the elites who've more or less run the nation for the last 240 years have come up with what they think is the ideal antidote to voter unrest.

They want one of the world's richest billionaires to throw his hat into the ring.

OK, well, maybe it's just another egomanical billionaire throwing his own hat into the ring -- but either way, is America really ready for the independent presidential campaign of New York's Mike Bloomberg?

Michael R. Bloomberg has instructed advisers to draw up plans for a potential independent campaign in this year's presidential race. His advisers and associates said he was galled by Donald J. Trump's dominance of the Republican field, and troubled by Hillary Clinton's stumbles and the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on the Democratic side.

Mr. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has in the past contemplated running for the White House on a third-party ticket, but always concluded he could not win. A confluence of unlikely events in the 2016 election, however, has given new impetus to his presidential aspirations.

In particular, the dream "confluence" for Bloomberg would be quasi-fascist blowhard Trump on his right, with self-proclaimed "democratic socialist" Sanders on his left. That seems like Politics 101, right? Millions of Americans -- at least based on the public opinion polls -- insist that they could never vote for Trump; likewise, only 47 percent of Americans say they would ever under any circumstance vote for a "socialist." That would create a wide center lane that Bloomberg -- who created a paramilitary police force during his 12 years running New York -- could drive an armored personnel carrier through. (It could also set up a bizarre election in which the former NYC mayor, born in Boston, might be the only non-native New Yorker, if facing Brooklyn's Sanders and Queens' Trump.)

There's a couple of big problems, though. The first is that -- despite the recent momentum for Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire -- Clinton has to remain the favorite to get the Democratic nomination, given her current popularity with black and Latino voters, among others. So what does a Trump-Clinton-Bloomberg election look like? Bloomberg is very liberal on social issues such as gay rights, strongly pro-gun-control, and a spokesman for the Wall Street elites. While Clinton is very liberal on social issues, firmly anti-gun, and historically friendly to Wall Street. Do we really need a richer, male version of Hillary?

Second, anybody who thinks there's a mass of voters clamoring for a fantastically wealthy, politically correct, middle-of-the-road candidate is someone who's probably been in hibernation or a coma for the last six or seven months. All of the movement in 2016 has been away from tepid centrists like Bloomberg. Voters seem driven by anger, whether it's toward immigrants or toward billionaires, and not motivated by a quest for someone to continue the status quo. The elites don't understand that the masses are NOT feeling like they have a lack of choices for 2016. To the contrary, the masses like their 2016 candidates -- because they hate elitists like Michael Bloomberg.

For me, personally, there's never a rationale for Mike Bloomberg. From creating that quasi-military police department to a quasi-CIA that spied on law-abiding Muslims, from his quashing of free speech at Occupy Wall Street to his stop-and-frisk campaigns that targeted blacks and other minorities, Bloomberg was a disaster for civil liberties and, more broadly, for the 99 Percent. Yes, the notion of a President Trump terrifies me -- but so does this scheme for a President Bloomberg.

The one solace is that the Bloomberg presidency will never happen. Aside from the folks around his table at the yacht club, who really likes Mike Bloomberg? He would not win a single state in November.

* There's a subliminal message for the owners of Philadelphia Media Networks in the photo for this blog post. Can you spot it?