Bloomberg is the Worst Kind of Pro-Regulation Liberal

Bloomberg is the worst kind of liberal because he validates the libertarian and conservative accusation that liberals want to regulate more and more the private lives of citizens, but he does so not for the cause that most liberals would find worth that cost of validating the opposition, but for a cause that most liberals would assign a lower priority.  In other words, I am (and I believe most liberals are) willing to defend government regulation in finance against objections that it's illegitimate paternalism before I am willing to defend nutritional regulation from those same objections.

In short, paternalistic regulation is not necessarily wrong and illegitimate (and of course is not necessarily legitimate either), but it's hard to conceive of a way to consistently support it in nutrition and dietary choices but oppose it in finance.

Bloomberg could defend nutritional paternalism by arguing that people don't have good enough information to act in their own interest with regard to diet, but he would also need to be committed to the position that they do have enough information to act in their interest in financial matters.  He would need to be committed to the position that financial decisions are simpler for people to understand than dietary ones: an implausible proposition.

Bloomberg could alternatively defend nutritional paternalism by arguing that the harms from unregulated dietary options are too great to bear; but this would require maintaining that they are greater than the harms from an unregulated financial sector (again, an uncertain position, that is likely too controversial to legislate).

Similarly, Bloomberg could argue that the harms from unregulated dietary options affect unconsenting third parties more than is acceptable (through increasing their contributions to the social provision of increased healthcare, in premiums and taxes); but this would require holding that unconsenting third parties are more affected by individual dietary choices than financial behavior (a position that is also uncertain, and too controversial to legislate, especially given the crisis in recent memory).

Again, liberals like myself are not afraid of defending paternalism in principle for some circumstances, but there are legitimate causes for which to have that fight (and dietary restrictions might not even be one of them at all, much less a high priority one).  To validate the opposition's accusations of paternalism in a highly visible way for a controversial (and likely minority) position is harmful to the liberal cause, and to do so while opposing paternalism in finance where it's really necessary suggests the possibility of self-interest and bias in Bloomberg's policy preference, rather than a principled support for paternalism in some cases.