Maybe the gods have a puckish sense of humor, or maybe they are telegraphing the trouble ahead. Either way, it cannot be mere coincidence that Barack Obama’s namesake experiment in left-wing social engineering is crashing just as New Yorkers are poised to crown an ideological soul mate.
“Don’t do it, don’t go there,” is the only rational response to the prospect of a Mayor de Blasio just as the ObamaCare debacle comes into view. But the race for City Hall proves that elections are not always exercises in rational thinking.
If they were, this contest would have started and ended on how New York could continue its 20-year run of remarkable progress on public safety and prosperity. Instead, voters signaled they preferred the candidate who vowed to dismantle the gains and redistribute the fruits. Backwards, march!
Sex sells beer and newspapers, but class warfare is going like hot cakes in Democratic politics. Preaching unity while practicing division is hardly a new idea, but there is no denying that the old trick is on a new winning streak.
Consider that New Yorkers are buying a pitch almost identical to the one they bought last year, with striking similarities between the president and mayor-in-waiting.
Obama and de Blasio are red-diaper babies whose fathers disappeared, and both have biracial families. Both changed their names and expressed enduring interest in anti-American radicals — Obama learned from Bill Ayres and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while de Blasio cheered the Sandinistas and Fidel Castro.
They became community organizers before entering elective politics, where they were undistinguished until riding vague promises of change to the top of the heap.
Their triumphs testify to their talents and persistence. But it is no accident that de Blasio became a copycat of Obama, who has redefined liberalism, and not for the better.
Under Obama, Dems have moved so far left that Bill and Hillary Clinton were caught off guard, their center-left orientation leaving them dust-covered relics. Oddly, de Blasio started out in the Clinton clan — he worked for Bubba and helped run Hillary’s 2000 Senate campaign — but adopted the Obama Way after the president topped 80 percent in the city in 2008 and 2012.
De Blasio’s direct appeals to racial and ethnic minorities, the unemployed, white women, the young and unions are straight out of the president’s playbook. So, too, are his scorn for those not charmed by calls for tax hikes; they also share the moralizing habit of denouncing big spending by opponents while embracing it among supporters.
Most troubling, neither Obama nor de Blasio had a whit of management experience before being entrusted with government power and huge bureaucracies. And neither had the wisdom to realize that shooting for the moon to remake a mature, complex society ends up leaving most people worse off, especially those they purport to be helping.
It has taken nearly five years for a majority of Americans to smell it, but the stench of failure surrounding Obama’s radical ideas is unmistakable. His health-care law’s inherent flaws are being revealed, adding to the crisis of incomes and labor participation. Many “ObamaCare losers” will not find a doctor, even if they find insurance.
National security is slipping, too, with our enemies emboldened and our friends alarmed at his abdication of global leadership. Most Americans now say we will become a second-rate power sooner rather than later.
Many New Yorkers fear de Blasio’s utopian schemes will have the same effect here, that he will wreak havoc on finances and the economy and jeopardize the record-low crime levels.
It all begins with the NYPD. If de Blasio handcuffs cops, the inevitable crime spike will claim the lives of more black and Latino young men. If the spike becomes the new normal, families and businesses will look for safer pastures, and the city’s death spiral will have begun.
He will react by freezing prices — rents, for example — and slap more controls on businesses in terms of pay and benefits. Each step will be popular with his base but ultimately fail to help because the laws of economics and human nature are immutable. That is the lesson of Cuba he didn’t learn.
Admittedly, this sounds like a worst-case scenario, but there is no way de Blasio can keep his promises and also keep the city moving forward. He was resolute in vowing to turn the page on the last 20 years, and the consequences of that mistake will, sooner or later, be felt by every New Yorker.
Those counting on his pledge to fix the “affordability” crisis will be especially disappointed because much of the price burden is the trickle-down result of the high cost of government. Everything de Blasio wants to do will only increase that burden.
Naturally, there will be winners. Business titans willing to pay tribute will be rewarded with favors, proving again that cronyism lives when capitalism dies.
Then there are the unions. Their push for retroactive pay is so unreasonable that it could be the first big test. A capitulation will signal weakness and open the door to endless demands for more, more, more.
Don’t be surprised. Just remember, you’ve been warned that de Blasio will do for New York what Obama is doing for America.