Having spent most of his money so far attacking Donald Trump, Mr Bloomberg will surely now try to bring Mr Sanders down. But that could work both ways. A couple of hundred million dollars in anti-Sanders advertisements could dent the socialist’s bandwagon. It could equally drive new voters into his camp. Moreover, a reoriented Bloomberg campaign would do nothing to solve the Democratic establishment’s core problem — its division between rival centrists. The parallels with Mr Trump’s position at this point in 2016 are unmistakable. Just as Republicans failed to find one anti-Trump candidate to rally around, Democrats are also badly fragmented. Mr Bloomberg is so far only making that problem worse…

The person with the most ability to change the narrative is Mr Bloomberg. If he pulled out of the race and put his financial might behind a unity Democratic candidate, the anti-Sanders majority could consolidate. The same would of course happen if the rest of the field dropped out in favour of Mr Bloomberg. Anyone placing their bets on that occurring clearly missed the Las Vegas debate. To put it mildly, he is not popular with the other Democrats. From Mr Sanders’ point of view, Mr Bloomberg is the gift that keeps on giving.