Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography
Mayor Bill de Blasio delivers remarks during the NYPD Police Memorial Day ceremony at One Police Plaza on Friday, May 10, 2019.
Bill de Blasio has earned much of the derision that greeted his announcement on Thursday that he is running for president. He promised transformative change when running for mayor but sometimes has been too cautious to deliver. He’s strayed dangerously close to ethical red lines in mixing fundraising and governing. He leapt too early onto the national stage in 2014, and quickly tumbled into the orchestra pit. Again and again, he left the house too late and rode a car that was too big to a gym that was too far from his office. He’s frequently been tetchy with the local press corps. Perhaps worst of all, he often ratified the right wing’s cartoon of him as aloof and ineffectual.
This article was co-produced with The Nation.
And yet, he runs—even though polls say New Yorkers would prefer he did not; even though among the Democratic field of 23 (and counting?) there are bigger names with more cash, less baggage and paths to the presidency that don’t require debunking the canard that our city is a crime-ridden, trash strewn communist nightmare. He goes where past New York mayors have failed, even though he promised not to, and even though he is on the payroll to run a city of 8 million for 31 months more.
Let’s not bother to wonder why he’s really running—to win, or just to line up a Cabinet post by showing off his chops?—or waste time nodding along with the pundits who assure us he has no chance to win. Other than Joe, Elizabeth, Bernie or Kamala, who in this massive field gets odds better than 50 to 1? Will even 15 of these candidates still be in the race come Halloween? Will 10 be there in New Hampshire? De Blasio’s microscopic chances are only as puny as what most of the primary field faces.
The thing to ask today is: What good can come of this? Nowadays our years-long presidential process gathers together hundreds of millions of dollars in donations and dark money, a bunch of nuanced policy proposals and a dozen or so reputations, throws them in a pit in the backyard, splashes on some butane and tosses in a match. Whumph! We watch the smoke from our back decks and wonder, is someone cooking something in those flames? Or at least warming their hands near the fire?
Can de Blasio running for president—likely futilely—create anything other than soot and a smoky odor?
When the derisive laughter fades, the fact is that de Blasio has a case to make. While he has fallen short on many counts, he has still delivered a lot of concrete, progressive change, improving tens of thousands of lives in the process, all while managing a $90 billion budget and a 300,000-person bureaucracy. He’s dealt with crises, from a terrorist attack to severe weather to cop killings to an Ebola outbreak. De Blasio can make the case that, except for former Vice President Biden, his work experience is better aligned with the presidency than any senator, representative or small-city mayor currently in the race, and maybe even more than the governors. And perhaps that will make people pay attention to the idea de Blasio represents: that, as disappointing as it can be, a center-left government can produce broad-based benefits for working people.
His slogan, “there’s plenty of money in this country—it’s just in the wrong hands” will piss a lot of people off—maybe the right people. It’s vague, emotive and a little dangerous, like all good slogans. But if it can focus any part of the Democratic debate on the distribution of resources (income, wealth and land) so that the party avoids the trap of making 2020 primarily about wedge issues like impeachment or guns, that’d be to everyone’s benefit.
Is de Blasio trying to be a more progressive presidential candidate than he is a mayor? Maybe. National campaigns are all about broad strokes. The nuances of de Blasio’s housing policy, which included a historic mandate that developers set aside income-targeted units but also directed subsidies to higher income groups with less severe housing needs, are unlikely to be nibbled over in Iowa school gymnasiums or church halls in South Carolina. De Blasio reducing arrests while continuing to embrace “broken windows” policing frustrated the left locally, but that argument won’t translate to a bigger stage. It’s the big and juicy ideas that get play in a presidential race, and de Blasio has had some good ones, like universal healthcare, living wages and early childhood education.
Along with big ideas, de Blasio carries big baggage. The negative commercials all but write themselves: reports of prosecutors who narrowly decided not to prosecute him for campaign finance violations; images of former donors and fundraisers heading to prison; shots of the city’s persistent homeless population; and samplings from the lead-paint scandal at NYCHA. Here, the nuances would help him—he did devote a lot of money to fixing NYCHA, just not enough—but those won’t make it into the script. All of that is assuming de Blasio is in the race long enough for there to be a negative ad about him.
I didn’t want Bill de Blasio to run for president, for one reason only: I didn’t want the management of the city where I work and live to be overtaken by the 24/7 nonsense of a presidential campaign. I didn’t want every move de Blasio makes, every word he says, to be interpreted through the lens of his national candidacy—and frankly, I didn’t want him making decisions thinking about primary voters in New Hampshire instead of me and my neighbors in the Bronx. Being mayor of New York City is a pretty great job, with tremendous potential to do good for millions of people, and I worry that de Blasio is mortgaging some of that on a long-shot run for the White House.
Now that he is running, though, maybe we can hope the national stage brings out some better version of Bill de Blasio: more transparent, more willing to try to connect with different constituencies, more cautious about the dangers of courting donors, bolder. I have no idea if that version of him would be a good president. But I know it would make for an even better mayor.
President Bill? The De Blasio Dossier
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4 thoughts on “Analysis: Will Something Good Come Out of De Blasio’s Run for President?”
What “good” would it do if DeBlasio increased the consciousness of NYC in the national political arena?
What “good” would it do for New York if he simply snagged a Cabinet post?
What “good” would it do if he actually won the Presidency?
If Bill DeBlasio becomes President it will mean a big win for New York City, with the election of someone who truly cares about New York City,
someone who cares for ALL the people of NYC, and not just the rich and powerful. He’ll work for our city’s benefit on the Federal level – unlike so-called New Yorker Donald Trump.
Mayor DeBlasio has a much better approval rating among New Yorkers than Trump has EVER had as President.
This in the context of certain long-term (and very expensive) NYC problems such as the MTA and NYCHA, which need substantial State or Federal input to foster genuine improvement.
While managing a 90 billion dollar budget and a 300,000 person bureaucracy, DeBlasio’s achievements in childhood education, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, protecting our immigrant communities, battling homelessness and the lack f affordable housing, improving high school graduation rates, holding down rent increases with his appointees to the Rent Stabilization Board, bettering community police relations, instituting paid family leave, and lowering crime rates cannot be disputed. Except by right-wingers of course, who have been trying to smear DeBlasio from day one. Remember the And Hammer and Sickle on the cover of Murdoch’s New York Post on election day?
His delay in endorsing Hillary Clinton showed that his political instincts about her weakness as a candidate were later justified. And just as Hillary was unfairly treated by James Comey, DeBlasio is similarly attacked with so-called reports of so-called unnamed prosecutors who supposedly “narrowly” decided not to prosecute him for campaign finance violations. With the exception of the President (who can’t be indicted as per Justice Dept. rules), anyone who is not indicted should not be unjustly accused and have their reputation tarnished with such unproved allegations.
If America is looking for a fresh face, if it’s looking for an alternative to the current con-man clown who thinks he’s king, if it’s looking for an articulate spokesman with progressive ideas, solid experience & sorely needed vision —then don’t rule out Bill DeBlasio. Especially at this extremely early”stage of the game .
For both Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were relative unknowns, and America picked them as alternatives to Republican candidates.
Besides being part of an attractive inter-racial family, DeBlasio can frame himself as a younger version of popular populist Bernie Sanders.
In addition, his win would not mean the loss of a vital Democratic Senate seat.
If a fawning stiff like Mike Pence can be Vice-President, then Bill DeBlasio certainly can fill that role graciously as a possible consolation prize.
I,m for CITYLIMITS very well written good points made about the Mayor. New Yorkers should give the Mayor a chance his vision for the national stage is a win for us New Yorkers.
This is Excellent!!!!!!! The more these Lefty Idiots try to top each other, the better it is for Trump! These Dopes, and the people that wrote this article(the NATION), think that they can get thru to us Deplorables and make us see the light. YOU JUST DONT GET IT!!!!!!
BronxRob, I wrote this article, not the Nation. Why do you say you are deplorable? You seem perfectly wonderful to me.