What the Nation Ought to Know About Bill de Blasio

Nicole GelinasNew York Post January 14, 2019

Mayor de Blasio gave his sixth State of the City address Thursday, and he conjured an image of a revolutionary leader prying money from terrified billionaires.

That’s because, in a Democratic primary with candidates tracking increasingly leftward, he stands out for the wrong reason: When it comes to governing, de Blasio is more old-school, big-city Democratic pragmatist than new-school, Democratic Socialist. He fears his left flank.

De Blasio used to talk about New York as a tale of two cities. Now, he is trying to write a tale for two audiences. After more than a half-decade of scrutiny, de Blasio grasps that the City Hall press corps — with its nonpartisan stories of his various failures — won’t pave his way to the White House.

So as he starts his sixth year in office, he is looking for new fans. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe recently, he previewed his new “universal” health-care plan. The program isn’t really universal — it’s just a tweak to New York’s $8 billion public-health system to direct the uninsured to clinics rather than to emergency rooms, plus some new initiatives to sign people up for health plans. But de Blasio bet — correctly — that MSNBC hosts wouldn’t show skepticism, as the local press has.

Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post