The United States is not looking so good lately. Medical costs are spiraling out of control, wealth continues to be siphoned to the very top, poverty and homelessness are rampant. Fortunately, elites have a solution for us: a healthy dose of political moderation.

The fetishism of pragmatic centrism for its own sake finds its most common expression in calls for former New York billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg to run for president, a regular ritual that comes around every election season.

In October 2015, concerned that Clinton’s primary fight had pushed her too far to the left, Bloomberg’s Wall Street friends pushed him to run, with billionaire hedge fund investor Bill Ackman declaring, “He’s all the best of Trump without the worst of Trump.” Michael Wolff, citing Clinton’s tack in early 2015 “towards an Internet-and-millennially-centric left that . . . sees the center as its enemy,” also endorsed a Bloomberg run, while the New York Post’s Michael Goodwin pointed to Bloomberg’s social liberalism, support for the Iraq War, and tough-on-crime policies as reasons he would make a “credible challenger” to Clinton. Bloomberg even got a nod from Rupert Murdoch.