Warren speaking to Colden Aldrich, 6, and his sister Avery, 8, in the selfie line after an event in Reno, Nev., on Sunday.

Bloomberg can’t escape the tale of the tape. Will it hurt him?

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Bloomberg is finding his reintroduction to national politics a bit bumpy after spending most of the last decade out of office. His long record of advancing policies and making remarks that angered many liberals is colliding with a newly emboldened activist culture in the Democratic Party that views people like him — centrist, compromising and often controversial — as the past.

The success of his presidential campaign rests in no small part on the hope that these people are not only wrong but are also such a small enough minority within the party that their opposition can be overcome. This is especially the case with the fraught issues of racial discrimination that Mr. Bloomberg has had to confront in recent days. Cornell Belcher, a strategist who worked for President Barack Obama and is now advising Bloomberg on African-American outreach, said that liberal skeptics of the former New York mayor would be wise not to assume his candidacy is a nonstarter with Democratic voters.