There used to be a stereotype about people with delusions of grandeur believing they were Napoleon Bonaparte. In Bill de Blasio’s case, he thinks he is Edison, Henry Ford and Gandhi all rolled into one.
A recent piece in Politico by Edward-Isaac Dovere explores the failure of de Blasio’s progressive record but also lets the mask slip on the New York City mayor’s inflated sense of self:
What’s Bill de Blasio’s Problem?The website for the Progressive Agenda Committee that Bill de Blasio launched in 2014 is now just an error message.The mayors of Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans and Boston all declined or didn’t return several requests seeking comment on him.Friends and allies literally roll their eyes when they hear the New York City mayor is trying to go national again, and his own aides have become experts in stalling when he asks to do more, or at throwing distractions or making up excuses for why they weren’t able to pull something together. They hate it.They wish he would stop.Here’s the paradox of Bill de Blasio: He’s the mayor of the biggest city in America, with now four years of a progressive record and just reelected with 66 percent of the vote, without any significant challenger, despite all the griping New Yorkers have been doing about him since Day One.
Here’s the key passage:
De Blasio bristles when presented with this failure, arguing that it’s “banal and simplistic” to expect him to fail at taking his message national now. “I want to talk to anyone who thinks that and tell them they need to start thinking more. I mean, give me a break. So every time someone tries something and it doesn’t work, it invalidates anything else they might do going forward? Tell Thomas Edison that, and Henry Ford, tell Mahatma Gandhi. How many people fell on their faces along the way trying things, experimenting with things, had setbacks? There’s no leader who hasn’t had setbacks.”
The New York Post had some fun with this:
It was also reported on FOX and Friends:
From the FOX News Insider:
Gandhi led a nonviolent civil disobedience movement that helped lead to Indian independence from Great Britain, and inspired other such movements worldwide.He was later honored with the title Mahatma, which is Sanskrit for “great soul” or “saint.”De Blasio lamented his level of favorability in America’s largest city, after being asked why he is not as popular as former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who started as a Republican but switched his affiliation to Independent during his tenure.De Blasio said that, unlike his predecessor, he has not spent as much time on self-promotion, according to the New York Post.He also said Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 election is partially due to the fact she did not heed his advice in illustrating a more progressive liberal platform on the campaign trail…”If they had [that] they would have won. I stand by that,” de Blasio, who was Clinton’s 2000 U.S. Senate campaign manager, said.Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who worked with both Bloomberg and former President Bill Clinton, told the Post that “if Hillary listened to him, she’s still unlikely to have been elected president.””Second, he’s no Gandhi,” Sheinkopf said.
Featured image via YouTube.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY