Here’s the Bill de Blasio arithmetic for New York City: 2-1+1=2. The story of New York is “A Tale of Two Cities,” he said in his 2013 mayoral campaign.
No, make that one, he said in his many “One City” speeches in which he promised to unite us. Scratch that, he says now that he’s preparing next year’s re-election campaign: It’s still two cities.
In other words, de Blasio’s grand re-election campaign theme is: It’s Us Against Them. Call in some pitchforks and fire up the torches. The mob forms to the left. The reason for the new strategy is obvious, but I’ll come back to that.
An innuendo-laden piece of nudge-nudge appeared in The New York Times this week under the headline, “De Blasio Shifts Away from His Re-Election Message of ‘One City.’ ” The “One City” motif has been used on banners hoisted behind de Blasio at public events, in policy platforms and frequently in the mayor’s speeches.
Saying something doesn’t make it true, however. The Times reporter wrote, “The notion that Mr. de Blasio has brought about a unified city . . . appears to have all but vanished as an argument for his re-election in 2017.”
Pursued by such a broad range of investigators that things are starting to look like a reenactment of the climactic chase scene in “The Blues Brothers,” the mayor is said to feel “sapped” of the “ability to court new voters . . . especially skeptical whites who have mostly shunned the mayor’s agenda.”
That’s an understatement. Reporters are leery of mentioning race unless it hurts Republicans, but if you look in the 15th paragraph of stories about poll numbers you’ll find that white New Yorkers really don’t like de Blasio.
In a May Quinnipiac poll, de Blasio’s approval among whites was 27 percent, against 58 percent for blacks and an overall favorability of 41 percent. “Black voters are the only group keeping de Blasio afloat,” the poll’s assistant director Mickey Carroll said at the time.
That huge race gap between white and black views of de Blasio is holding steady. So there certainly are two New Yorks, and the thing dividing us is de Blasio. I’m always startled by the bitter animosity toward him that pops up at cocktail parties: What exactly did white liberals think they were getting when they elected this guy who worked for the Sandinista regime and spent his honeymoon in communist Cuba? The man’s sympathies could hardly be more clear if he had a tattoo of a hammer and sickle on his cheek. (And I’m not saying he doesn’t. I haven’t seen all of his cheeks.)
“[de Blasio’s] like a firefighter who sets fires so he can look like the hero who puts them out.”
It’s clear why de Blasio is shamelessly dropping his pretense to being a unifier, though: It’s the only way he thinks he can win. If this all carries an odor of sickening familiarity like grandma’s perfume, it ought to. It comes straight out of the textbook for the hard left, “Rules for Radicals.” Wrote Saul Alinsky in the bible of progressive instigation, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.”
De Blasio has, the Times reports, “fashioned an array of boogeymen to rail against, from ‘billionaire media owners’ and hedge-fund managers to state investigatory agencies and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.” He hopes to fire up his voters with the fuel of hate, getting to 51 percent with a coalition of minorities and some far-left whites. Got a problem? Blame your local hedge-fund manager or “media owner.”
They’re the guys who are supposed to fill the potholes, teach the children and keep derelicts from menacing you, right? The other two targets named are de Blasio’s fellow Democrats. When even the Times is deriding your picks for enemies of progress as “boogeymen,” you know your ploy is a joke.
For de Blasio to reverse course like this is worse than hypocrisy; it’s deep cynicism. He’s like a firefighter who sets fires so he can look like the hero who puts them out. And he calls to mind another politician who came to prominence by joyfully declaring, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America” but transitioned into the nasty partisan whose ads declared, “Mitt Romney: Not One of Us.”
Politicians who rally us to our better natures can be inspiring, but usually not for long. The main thing any pol wants is to maintain his grip on power. Making the city, the country, or the world a better place takes not just vision but patience and dedication. It takes management skill and negotiating prowess. It takes qualities that both de Blasio and President Obama lack.
It’s far easier to turn demagogue, to poison the wells, to embitter and enrage. You can get re-elected by saying, as Obama once did, “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends.” But neither Obama nor de Blasio should be proud of doing everything they can to polarize America.