Tim Wu, whose insurgent challenge to Andrew Cuomo's political machine fell short in Tuesday's primary, says he is furious at fellow progressive Mayor de Blasio.
“There was an effort to elect a progressive to the lieutenant governor office, and the greatest impediment to that was the Mayor Bill de Blasio,” Wu said in an interview Wednesday morning after he and running mate Zephyr Teachout were defeated by Gov. Cuomo and Kathy Hochul Tuesday. “He personally did more than any other actor to ensure that the lieutenant governor would go not to a progressive but to a conservative," Wu said.
Wu said that de Blasio jumped into the lieutenant governor's race at a crucial moment -- after Wu won an endorsement from the New York Times and was gaining “Wu-mentum.”
“He did radio ads, he did get-out-the-vote, he did the big ringing endorsement [for Hochul] right at the crucial moment. He took us on,” said Wu.
The only group of people who did more work than de Blasio to help Cuomo and his bank lobbyist running mate win the primary?
The UFT/AFT/NYSUT leaders:
1) who engineered a putsch at NYSUT to make sure the old leaders who had turned on Cuomo were ousted
2) who threatened the Working Families Party with dissolution if WFP gave their ballot slot to Zephyr Teachout
3) who refused to endorse Teachout in the primary and provide much needed cash and support for the Teachout/Wu campaign (as PEF did) and
4) who made robocalls for the campaign.
De Blasio, Weingarten, Magee, Mulgrew - four reasons why Andrew Cuomo will win re-election this year handily in the general election and his bank lobbyist running mate will ride along with him into power.
It probably wasn't necessary, but on the odd chance it was, then there's no question that De Blasio was taken out to a nice lunch and given a stern, "Listen, Sonny, this is how the world really works" lecture from some dignified emissary of the Overclass, and has been pretty reliable ever since.
ReplyDeleteYup probably that meeting he had with Rahm when he was mayor elect.
DeleteMatt Stollar's analysis of the election results refers to De Blasio as a slightly more progressive version of Bill Clinton - an astute observation, especially since De B ran Hillary's first Senate campaign - triangulating among constituencies, and pushing a fundamentally neoliberal agenda: charter schools (while pretending otherwise), privatized pre-K (notice how that came about with basically no one saying anything), laissez fair real estate and economic development, and continued rule of the city by the NYPD.
DeleteOr was it over cheesecake at Junior's with Obama?
ReplyDeleteDeBlasio Progressive?
DeBlasio Opportunist!
DeBlasio wears the Obama mantle. He found that he could play with the big boys if he just follows their lead.
Neo-Liberals speak out of one side of their mouth for the little guy, their nominal constituency, and the other side of their mouth for the plutocracy, their real constituency.
This is what New York's bs progressive mayor is.
Diane has a post on how Rhee's husband, Mayor Johnston is working closely with deBlasio. "Johnson tapped New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to chair a national task force, Cities of Opportunity, to reduce inequality. This project kicked-off Aug. 10 in the Big Apple." The fact that Johnson heads the US Conference of Mayors. Also the NYTimes reports that Eva is getting 4 new co-location spaces. It seems the only campaign promise dB is keeping is to the horses.
ReplyDeleteWhy bother keeping campaign promise these days, when our own president ran a campaign of deception? Watch what I do not what I say.
ReplyDeleteDeBlasio is New York's facade mayor, just like the facade of the glittering skyline.