I want Bill de Blasio to win the 2020 presidential election. It may sound strange that a conservative pundit at a conservative outlet would hold such a position, but hear me out. America, New York City needs you. As he announces his candidacy today, I wholeheartedly endorse Bill de Blasio for president of United States, because if he wins then he can’t be mayor of New York City anymore. Not for nothing, that’s kind of my bottom-line issue at the moment.
New York City is a fragile ecosystem. For most of my adult life from 1993 until 2013, it was managed by competent, serious men. Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg took this city, the greatest that has ever been known to man, the scourge of Boston and big brother of Philadelphia, to new and exciting heights. We were back, baby! Swing!
And then came de Blasio. It wasn’t supposed to happen. The socialist from Park Slope who summered in the ’80s at communist camps in Nicaragua was supposed to lose to Anthony Weiner, until the latter gave into the strange desires of his, well, wiener. And just like that, a socialist became mayor.
Dig this from a 2013 New York Times profile: “Bill de Blasio, then 26, went to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine in the middle of a war between left and right. But he returned with something else entirely: a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.”
Unfettered leftist government pretty much sums up de Blasio’s time in office as mayor. And it is awful. We need the rest of the country to shoulder some of this nonsense and madness. I’ll give you a few examples of de Blasio’s unfettered leftist government.
One of his first signature acts as mayor was to weaken restrictions on public urination. This perhaps suggests a potential campaign slogan: “De Blasio 2020, If You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go.” The result has been a more fragrant city, around every which corner some fine fellow may be relieving himself. This is not a burden that New York City deserves to bear alone. If people are peeing with amnesty on the Bowery, so should they also on Main Street.
But there are other issues beyond micturition. De Blasio has his own Green New Deal, and it’s a doozy. Big Bill says Gotham will be “The first of any major city on the Earth to say to building owners, ‘You’ve got to clean up your act, you’ve got to retrofit, you’ve got to save energy, If you don’t do it by 2030 there will be serious fines, as high as $1 million or more for the biggest buildings.” That’ll stick it to those building owners who wouldn’t dare pass the cost along to New Yorkers trying to rent or buy apartments that already cost more than most McMansion mortgages.
Congestion pricing is another big winner. For those who don’t know, this is a plan whereby you turn half of the streets in midtown Manhattan into pedestrian plazas, add about 9 zillion miles of bike lanes, and then argue that traffic has gotten so bad that New Yorkers have to pay a toll to drive on their own streets.
While homelessness and crime inch back up, and the subways are pulled along by underfed mules, Comrade de Blasio is hard at work making sure that we can’t have plastic bags to carry our bacon, egg, and cheeses, or straws to drink our egg creams.
So, listen, I get it. I know what you are going to say; at least he is limited to New York City. Why should we, the rest of the country, take this problem off your hands? So here is my answer to that. At least as president he would face checks and balances from conservatives in the legislature and judiciary. You people would be able to fight back. In New York we have fewer Republicans on the City Council than the Knicks have playoff appearances.
And by the way, you owe us. How many of your weirdo siblings and cousins who want to be artists or “find themselves” have we taken off your hands? Do you think it’s easy for us seeing these bright-eyed, bushy-tailed kids come from the hinterland full of hope, knowing that in a few years they will be crushed and empty and broke?
America, will you please take our mayor? You’d be doing us a really big favor. Please join us in this. Please make Bill de Blasio the next president of the United States. He can do less damage there, I promise.
