Former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg made headlines worldwide over the past few days amid speculation that he is running for US president in 2020. In an early morning Instagram post on Wednesday, the billionaire announced that he was re-registering as a Democrat, claiming that the party must "provide the checks and balances our nation so badly needs." The vocal critic of Trump also pledged to contribute 100 million US dollars to help Democrats flip both the Senate and the House in the upcoming mid-term elections.

It's not the first time he's done this: he switched from being a Democrat to Republican in order to run for mayor back in 2001, then became an independent six years later. 

This chameleon-like adaptation resembles Donald Trump's party switcheroo, and has made some question his loyalty. Their evident similarities don't end there: both are New York businessmen who made a name for themselves in the 1980s. Though they are magnates in their respective fields, their foray into national politics signals a broader American desire for change.

Trump inherited his father's real estate empire in the affluent East Coast and successfully expanded it in the 1980s. He bought the air over Tiffany's jewelry on Fifth Avenue and built the landmark Trump Tower beside it. He became a New York celebrity, and pedestrians touched him just for good luck when he walked down the street – he reveled in it. The showman was lauded as the symbol of a triumphant empire.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg, an electrical engineer in his early days, was quietly working on a startup called Innovative Market Systems (the predecessor of Bloomberg LP) with a golden parachute of 10 million US dollars from the now-defunct Salomon Brothers. He applied computing to sending accurate data to financial institutions at lightning speeds. Back then, it was a status symbol if you had a Bloomberg Terminal on your office table across Wall Street. Now, there are approximately 325,000 such terminals across the world.

But he is not just a drab businessman with a personal net worth of 51.8 billion US dollars; he served as the three-term mayor of New York from 2001 to 2012, producing a glittering record in tiding the city through the post-9/11 trauma and the worst global financial crisis after the Great Depression. With remarkable results in buoying the local economy and reducing crime, he is believed by many to be the best NYC mayor.

Apart from being a mayor taking only one dollar a day as his salary, Bloomberg is a philanthropist, a trade globalist, a crusader for clean energy, and an immigration advocate. "We are a country that thrives on free trade and it's benefited all over America," he said during an interview with CGTN America in New York. Bloomberg believes that a trade war kills jobs, slows innovation and strains ties with other countries, and will end up being a huge drag on the US economy.

As the UN Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change, he's been working on the use of renewable energy, including using his private foundation to clean up oceans and coal corporations. And he leads a pro-immigration advocacy group, claiming that restricting immigration costs America of jobs, business and new ideas. In addition, the 11th richest man in the world took out 50 billion US dollars against the National Rifle Association.

All his remarks and actions point to a repudiation of Trump's policies. The self-promoting real estate developer has brought to his presidency the "Art of the Deal," which was actually written by a ghost writer – journalist Tony Schwartz – and governed the country in his own adversarial way: he initiated a trade war with China, he withdrew America from the Paris climate change accord, he flirted with gun control, and he obstructed low-income immigrants from obtaining green cards.

Things started to change in 2016 when it turned out that many Americans expressed a preference for the self-made super rich in assuming the presidency instead of traditional candidates, such as lawyers and career politicians. Trump has excelled in this regard: he created the narrative of the self-made businessman for himself, even though he hails from money. And Bloomberg can be seen as quite an American accomplishment, rising from the commonplace to staggering financial success.

This collective preference actually stems from a deeply-rooted American myth: the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent. After the Great Recession, many Americans were still hobbling from a loss of jobs and capital that vanished overnight. Millions from the working class suddenly found themselves unemployed and unable to pay their mortgages.

For them, the American Dream was shattered. So when the 2016 presidential election pit Hillary Clinton – who was seen as a continuation of an establishment that failed to heed blue collar concerns – against Donald Trump – a Washington outsider who had cultivated the image of self-made success – middle Americans picked the latter. After all, a man who had pulled himself up by the bootstraps to grow super rich and famous is the most American dream of all. Of course, the fact that Trump was born to a wealthy, well-connected father in the world of New York real estate wasn't heeded by those outside the region.

The growing disparity in wealth exacerbated social and political differences. The lower-middle class felt that they were not represented by the Wall-Street-aligned liberals in Washington, so they turned out en masse during the primaries and then the November 6 election to have their voices heard. Of course, the wealth gap had been widening for decades, with the rich growing richer and the poor – well – stagnating. Real wages since the 1970s have not kept pace with inflation, so the standard of living for those in the lower-middle class has decreased.

The plight of the American poor has only grown over the past few years, and that's why many wanted change in the national leadership.

Michael Bloomberg also ascended the ranks of wealth in New York, but on Wall Street. He has the pragmatism of a business leader, and thinks government should be run like a business, just like Trump. Though he is self-made, he is considered part of the financial establishment. However, he has the potential to fulfill constituents' desire to shake things up in Washington, as the public gravitates toward non-traditional candidates.

But Americans are tired of the status quo. For those who think their own economic situations can be fixed by running government like a business, can people like Trump or Bloomberg deliver?

(Cover photo: Michael Bloomberg answers the questions of press members after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him as his Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change at UN Headquarters in New York, March 05, 2018. /VCG Photo)

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