Mike Bloomberg’s (very expensive) moment

ON A RAINY afternoon in Chattanooga, the queue for Mike Bloomberg trailed around the block. Eleven weeks into his presidential campaign, the former New York mayor and world’s 12th-richest man is already well known in Tennessee. This was his fourth visit to the state, one of 14 that will hold its primary vote on March 3rd. He is also dominating its airwaves, with television ads touting his criticisms of Donald Trump, mayoral record and philanthropic support for gun control and climate-change policy running on a loop. “It’s almost like it was with Obama,” said a sodden Chattanoogan retiree, marvelling at the size of the crowd.

The back-to-front oddity of Mr Bloomberg’s campaign has drawn a lot of scorn. Presidential primaries have traditionally been decided by the first four early-voting states which, because of his late entry to the race, he is sitting out. His politics, as a former Republican, once synonymous with racially insensitive policing, also looked hopeless to many leftist commentators. Yet self-made billionaires tend not to be bad at reckoning their odds. And, sure enough, while Mr Bloomberg’s rivals knocked lumps out of each other in Iowa and New Hampshire, his aggressive campaigning in the Super Tuesday states has produced the biggest, fastest polling surge of the contest.