I know, progressives argue that the country needs more than just a return to normalcy after Trump. Its problems need a far stronger tonic, which in their prescription includes such things as providing government health insurance with no premiums or copays, taxing wealth, forgiving student loan debt and defanging Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Yet I can't help suspecting that most people don't want to be whipsawed from an extreme presidency on the populist right to an extreme presidency on the populist left. They want temperatures to cool, divisions to narrow and presidential rhetoric to be, well, presidential.

Which brings us back to Bloomberg, who may cause as much heartburn among progressives as Sanders does among moderates. His pitch - which he's making directly to the public through tens of millions of dollars in campaign commercials - is that he gets things done. That's a stark contrast to Sanders' aspirational promises, which the senator admits he won't be able to fulfill without a "revolution" by voters. And it's more concrete than Biden's nostalgia-tinged campaign to make the presidency great again.

Granted, Bloomberg's platform isn't far different from that espoused by other moderates, such as former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.). But Bloomberg has a Croesus-sized war chest, which he's using to raise himself above the white noise of the debates, rallies and punditry. And as Morning Consult notes, the commercials are making Bloomberg considerably more appealing to Democratic voters than he was when he announced his candidacy. Granted, he hasn't faced a barrage of negative ads and coverage yet, so that flirtation may be brief.

But if the Morning Consult numbers are right, Bloomberg is establishing himself alongside Buttigieg as an alternative to Biden for voters worried about how the impeachment proceedings are affecting the former vice president's reputation. That's a remarkable shift in momentum, transforming the notion of Bloomberg winning the nomination from inconceivable into a real possibility.