What Critics Don't Understand About Bill de Blasio
Last weekend’s New York City blackout was another embarrassing stain on the record of Democrat-Socialist Mayor Bill de Blasio, prompting a chorus of criticism from all corners. The mayor of the nation’s largest city, often touted as the Capital of the World, was a thousand miles away in Iowa campaigning for President, where he’s currently at 0 percent in the polls. That’s right, 0. The front pages of the New York’s colorful tabloid newspapers screamed on Sunday morning. Even the liberal Daily News blasted the Mayor suggesting he was some combination of a hypocrite, a failure and corrupt. The New York Times asked, “Where was de Blasio?”
The center-right New York Post called for the mayor’s ouster, stating, “Think of all the failures he has overseen, any one of which would have embarrassed a lesser man.” The paper then went on to detail a laundry list of hypocrisy, inept leadership and outright fiascos during his time in office.
All of these observations are based in fact, yet they miss something very crucial about the Mayor and those like him we increasingly see on the national stage. He’s an extremist ideologue. He believes that he has a mission to promote his view of the world, which also happens to be American socialism. His current office and responsibility to the people of New York are less important than advancing the cause for what he believes is the greater good.
De Blasio believes he’s on a mission. It’s a naïve trek to an alternate reality where socialism creates utopia. He doesn’t care about the drudgery of management or the political realities of his own campaign. He wants to remake America. That purpose is bigger in his mind than his duty to one already liberal city.
He’s also not like others praying at the altar of the far left these days who do so only for the sake of political opportunism. De Blasio is a true believer, like Warren, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to name a few darlings of the radical left. Remember, this is the same guy who honeymooned in Cuba and supporter of the revolutionary socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua during the 1980s. This is the same guy who told New York Magazine in 2017 that he believed the government should have significant control over private property rights.
De Blasio has spent his time in office meandering through an agenda filled with grand ideas about education, housing, healthcare and the environment only to see a city which saw a renaissance under Giuliani and Bloomberg take dramatic steps backwards in terms of quality of life and affordability. His anti-poverty programs are a failure. His management of a public housing crisis was so poor that the Trump administration had to step in to deal with deplorable conditions. His education initiatives demonize the proven results of the school choice movement for minority students, in favor of locking them into failing city public schools.
None of it matters. De Blasio is a fanatic for his cause. Like most extremists, facts and reality don’t matter. History doesn’t matter. Compromise is anathema. They lack the ability to be introspective and assess circumstances rationally. They believe that this time, it will be different. This time it will work. This time, the promises of so-called free stuff and government-manufactured opportunity and equality will happen – if only we let it.
The New York Post and New Yorkers - who have nothing but their apathetic selves to blame for de Blasio’s hapless tenure – may try to shame him, but fanatics aren’t rational. A blackout won’t drive de Blasio from the campaign trail. It won’t distract him from his mission.