THE BILL COMES DUE

"How many times do I have to tell you? It's Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez!"

You've made it in politics when everyone knows you solely by your initials. FDR, JFK, RFK. Bush 43 was known strictly as W (pronounced Double-yuh). It's a sure sign that AOC is probably headed to bigger things even if people can't remember her first two names. 

So it's time to make room in the Initial Hall of Fame for the latest Oval Office Executive-wannabe, Bill de Blasio. But let me hasten to inform you that he isn't known as BDB. Nope, from my perspective as a New Yorker, de Blasio's nickname ought to be OIM -- short for Our Idiot Mayor.

Which is the bigger birdbrain?

Not that OIM hasn't been a total washout in his first six years in office. Pedestrian deaths in New York have dropped thanks to his push to drop the city speed limit to 25 MPH. Free Pre-K is available for all four year-olds. He made good on East River ferry service, and wants to bring it to the Hudson as well. And New York continues to be the safest big city in America. 

But because Democrats pointed to an overall national drop in crime when Rudy Giuliani was mayor, I'm going to say OIM has nothing to do with it, and see how he likes it. So that makes three things that Democrat Presidential Candidate #24 can point to as successes. Because if anything impresses participants in the Iowa caucus, it's ferry service. 

Unfortunately, this trifecta is outweighed by... well, where to begin? How

This kid encapsulates New York's opinion of OIM.

about with broken promises (replacing Central Park horse drawn carriages with Model T-style electric cars, for one); ridiculous ideas that will never come to pass (banning "inefficient" steel and glass structures); picking pointless fights with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the local press, and anyone else who doesn't recognize his genius; having a wife who "misplaced" $850-million in taxpayer money; dogshit on every block;and good old-fashioned corruption. 

For the latter, I direct you to the yeoman's work provided by a local news site, The City, which has been keeping tabs on OIM's activities on a page called The de Blasio Files. You don't have to read the details; all you need to do is look at the headlines to get the gist of OIM's administration. Imagine Boss Tweed with a multiracial family, and you get the idea.

The de Blasios put the "city" in "duplicity".

People in and outside New York positively marvel at our ability to have elected a hack like OIM after three terms of serious service by Mike Bloomberg -- and, for that matter, two terms of Rudy Giuliani (before he became the babbling, drunken consilergie for a crime boss President). It seems like 20 straight years of dropping crime rates, rising tourism, and clean streets was a bad thing. 

So when it came time to elect a new mayor, the 25% of New Yorkers who actually voted decided it was time for a change. As with residents of Biloxi, Mississippi who wouldn't vote for a Democrat if the life of their daughter-girlfriend depended on it, so will most New Yorkers treat Republican candidates as if they were, well, Republicans. (It was Staten Island, more than any other borough, that helped to push Giuliani and Bloomberg over the top.)

Even the groundhog wants to get the hell away from him.

And yet, nobody but nobody in New York likes OIM. Not the residents, his fellow Democrats, or even the New York Times. Which is why he's running for President -- he's tired of being trashed by everybody in his hometown, while clearly bored with his job. Perhaps he can get some of that 1% love in the cornfields of Iowa.

He sure as heck won't find it here. OIM is running for president despite being thin-skinned, corrupt, and angry, flailing around with ideas that even he knows will never come to pass, all the while being the titular head of an equally scandalous family. It worked for Trump!

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