THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN, AND NOW THEY MUST BE PUNISHED: New York City Chooses the Form of Its Destructor and It’s (Check Notes) a Socialist Ex-Rapper (!) Who Supports Global Jihad. Update: One of His “Raps” Praised Five Convicted Terrorist Funders of Hamas.
In the city that was struck by Al Qaeda on 9/11, notes David Strom.
Yesterday I wrongly wrote that this was the election. It was a mental typo. This isn’t the election, just the Democrat primary, but the winner of the Democrat primary almost always wins the election, unless the Democrat candidate is so terrible that a Republican like Guiliani or an “independent” billionaire like Bloomberg can win.
Are we at that stage? Or does New York City want to go the way of Chicago?
Well, New York’s most fired up voters are. They’re a small percentage of the population, but they’ve chosen to go full hammer and sickle, despite knowing within recent memory good governance. (Of course, New York’s most fired up voters also remember the Bad Old Days, and look back fondly on them, something akin to how Londoners view the Blitz, but with a funky Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters soundtrack.) According to NPR today, “Democratic primary race turnout under 30% in NY’s largest cities,” including New York. That was also the formula for DeBlasio’s win in 2015: “20% Turnout in New York Primaries,” the New York Times reported in September of 2013.
As Charles Cooke writes, “New Yorkers Know How to Fix Their City and Have Chosen Not To,” asking, “What, in the name of all that is holy, are you doing?”
My reading of history shows that, if New York is to function properly, it needs a pragmatic, no-frills mayor who is obsessed with fighting crime, with ensuring that the city’s already high taxes do not become so absurd that the taxpayers leave, and with preventing the machinery of government from being derailed by special interests. When New York has one of those mayors — as it did in Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg — it works. When New York does not have one of those mayors — as was the case in the 1970s and 1980s, and, as has been the case (to a far lesser extent) since 2014 — it works less well. Politics is a complicated endeavor, and, in consequence, it does not exhibit too many genuine “iron rules.” But this is one of them: Serious person as mayor = success. Frivolous person as mayor = failure.
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On all the political matters that were ancillary to their aims, both Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg happily toed the city’s line. As such, the important question before voters was simply, “Do you want to keep the streets safe and the services competent?” For two decades, the resounding answer was “yes.”
Now? Not so much.
Good and hard Fun City, good and hard:
UPDATE:
(Classical reference in headline.)
