“Class-warfare and racist,” Michael Bloomberg describes the campaign of possible Democrat successor Bill de Blasio, the Daily Caller notes:
“But his whole campaign is that there are two different cities here. And I’ve never liked that kind of division. The way to help those who are less fortunate is, number one, to attract more very fortunate people. They are the ones that pay the bills,” Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg has a dim view of Dodd-Frank, and of rhetoric from progressive politicians that demonizes banks, even citing the conservative view that quotas established by government sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac share responsibility for the 2008 financial collapse.
“But the mortgage crisis was not the exclusive creation of the banks. We all wanted everybody to get a mortgage regardless of whether they could afford it, and that eventually leads to euphoria and exaggeration and to sloppiness and a variety of those things. But Fannie and Freddie were as guilty as everybody. I’m not taking the banks off the hook. But I don’t think that just because you’re a banker you should be vilified,” Bloomberg said.
“If you want to come out of a recession, you need banks out there being expansive and making loans. Not ‘Let’s protect the country so that banks don’t take any risks’! The result of Dodd-Frank is that we are more vulnerable to a handful of banks going belly-up than we were before. Thank you very much! It didn’t accomplish anything, because it wasn’t a well-thought-out piece of legislation. I’m not opposed to legislation. This was just a terrible bill,” Bloomberg said.
De Blasio’s “racist” campaign currently holds 43 percent support in the Democratic mayoral primary, which would be enough to avoid a run-off election, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. De Blasio leads his closest competitor Bill Thompson by 23 points. The Democratic primary will be held Tuesday.
Despite his nannying proclivities, pro-bike lane and anti-Second Amendment obsessions, New Yorkers — and the rest of the country — may well look back on the Bloomberg era as a golden era for the city, “a pleasant vacation from the decades-long decline that preceded it,” a decline that could very likely return, if the next mayor abandons the law enforcement techniques put into place by Rudy Giuliani, Bloomberg’s immediate predecessor, Kyle Smith wrote a couple of months ago in the New York Post:
It wasn’t so long ago that things were completely crazy, when guests at cocktail parties chatted about strategies for dealing with muggers (it was widely believed that you should always carry what we called ”mugger money” so as not to anger your attackers). Those who were brave enough to park cars on city streets made sure to remove the stereos when they parked, then place “No radio, nothing valuable in car” signs on their dashboards. If you fell asleep on a subway train, you awoke with an X neatly cut over your pocket and your wallet gone.
In his forthcoming memoir, Dinkins blames “racism, pure and simple,” not residents fed up by a city out of control, for his narrow 1993 defeat by Rudy Giuliani.
Now it seems likely that we’re going to elect another conventional liberal mayor, for the first time in two decades. As Dinkins did during his successful 1989 campaign, most of the rival Democratic candidates for mayor are playing for votes by trying to turn citizens against the police (though a recent poll found that Commissioner Ray Kelly, who is rumored to be the next head of Homeland Security in DC, enjoys an approval rating of 75%, including more than 60% among blacks).
The 20 years of the Giuliani-Bloomberg era have been a pleasant vacation from the decades-long decline that preceded it. Today we joke about soda bans instead of how to react to armed robbers. But soon New York may be back doing what it does best: Being Crazytown, USA.
Or as Jay Nordlinger wrote in a recent issue of National Review on Dead Tree, “Everything Rudy and Bloomy have done is reversible:”
There are people who say that New Yorkers will never go back. They will never again “tolerate the intolerable,” to borrow a phrase from Norman Podhoretz. They have seen the lights of Paree — a safe, livable, delightful New York — and they won’t go back to the farm. I don’t believe it. Everything Rudy and Bloomy have done is reversible. The barbarians are never vanquished, permanently. They are always at the gate, waiting to be allowed back in.
What can reverse our reign of peace? A mayor who submits to racial bullying. Leadership that is complacent, inattentive — that lets our guard down. “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man.”
The least important thing about New York is my relation to it. New York does not exist for my personal pleasure. There are 8 million people here, all with their own fish to fry. But everyone has an interest in freedom from fear. And it has been so lovely to live here.
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