This may be the all-time dumbest thing featured in this column, which is saying a lot: Mayor Bill de Blasio, the bumbling, accidental leader of this city, has thrown his hat into the presidential ring. He’s polling at less than 1% nationwide. His underwhelming showing is due to the fact that his accomplishments are nothing worth bragging about much less something on which to base a run for the nation’s highest office.
He claims he’s for the “working class” but throws them under the bus whenever he can. He calls himself a progressive but bends to the will of plutocrats and wealthy developers. He has placed unqualified people in key roles, who are being paid exorbitant amounts of taxpayer money to fail. See: NYCHA, DHS, DOE.
The homeless population is out of control, his policies on that front have been an abject failure and it shows on our streets and in our subways. His wife was charged with getting a handle on the mental illness epidemic yet all she did was succeed at flushing hundreds of millions of dollars down the toilet.
BDB held a press conference at Trump Tower, the NY home of his Republican rival, and had his butt handed to him by protesters. This is why he has scripted town halls in order to protect himself from critics.
He feels that your money should be everyone’s money and that he knows the best way to spend it. Anyone who disagrees with his policies is automatically branded a racist.
In fact, Bill de Blasio’s mayoral ascendancy was basically a fluke fueled by flaming racial tensions, later buoyed by incumbency. He claims to want to end “inequality,” thereby stifling the individualism that makes leaders and fosters innovation. The war on specialized high schools is an example of this. We’re going to water down the admission requirements now in order to spare the feelings of kids who can’t compete. It’s ok if they don’t succeed once they get there, it’s the symbolism of the “equality” during the admissions process that counts.
He has succeeded in tying the hands of the police, who now have to look the other way when they see quality of life crimes because we can no longer have consequences for bad behaviors. He wants to fling open the doors of Rikers, vacate the island and sell it off to the highest bidder, again invoking “equality.” Every borough is expected to take on a new jail because inmates’ families have to take long bus rides now, yet Staten Island won’t be getting one because it’s ok if those relatives have to travel to another borough to see their incarcerated beloved. It’s also ok to only have one medical facility for the entire jail population – at the proposed Kew Gardens jail – and for inmates to have to travel back and forth to it, but not for them to have to travel to court appearances.
He also is opening 90 homeless shelters because equality dictates that this is the preferred way to handle the housing crisis instead of mandating a certain percentage of permanently affordable units in all dense new housing. That might hurt a millionaire’s bottom line, so it’s a nonstarter.
He wants to improve traffic and protect the environment yet insists on making daily Brooklyn gym visits and dry cleaning runs via an SUV caravan so he can “stay connected” with his former neighborhood. That’s where he was while veterans were expecting him at D-Day ceremonies. He also skipped out on a recent memorial service for those who died from 9/11 related illnesses. This isn’t the way to garner support for a national campaign. It’s gotten so bad that CBS reporter Marcia Kramer has dubbed de Blasio “The Dissing Mayor.”
It can only be assumed that de Blasio is trying to use this run as a bargaining chip for a cabinet position of some sort. A recent poll found that only 21% of the city’s Democrats think it’s a good thing that he is running for president. So will former VP Joe Biden, or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the current frontrunners, want to be attached to someone who doesn’t even have hometown support and came very close to being indicted by former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara? It’s doubtful.
Let’s just hope the Dope from Park Slope fades into obscurity soon. The rest of the USA doesn’t deserve the likes of the Big Apple’s Big Bird.