The morning after the inauguration I was sitting on the
subway reading the paper. A middle aged
Hispanic woman next to me wordlessly put her finger on the picture of the DiBlasio
family in my paper and gave me a smiling nod. I gave her one right back.
This election meant a lot to a huge chunk of New York’s newly
emerging voting demographic - the people who felt that whatever Bloomberg was
doing for the last 12 years had nothing to do with them. Bloomberg did some
great things but at the end of the day he was a tone deaf snob who saw himself
primarily as Concierge in Chief for the haves.
Bill and Hillary sitting in the front row royalty seats at the inauguration reminded everyone that there was something big going on here. This was more than Bernie
Sanders becoming Mayor of Burlington in 1981. There was, and is, nothing less
at stake here than the future of liberal policies in America.
The
Republican express has been splintered and momentarily derailed by the Tea Party. The newest Democratic wedge issue is the increasingly toxic gap between rich and poor. Democrats smell blood in the water and they're going after the electoral holy
grail - America’s big fat voting middle.
You have to imagine that the right wing think
tanks are working overtime to develop their own wedge issues to torpedo
DiBlasio and sink Hillary. You have to believe we need to be worried about cops driving up crime statistics, developers backing away from big
plans and conservative talking heads warning about the end of charter schools.
I confess that I’m a glass is half empty,
chicken little kind of guy. I know that I should have been more excited by the
speeches but when it was over I was mostly disappointed and worried.
The campaign is over. The good guys won. The progressive wing of the Democratic party had the microphone
on the national stage in a rare teaching moment. This was the time to reach out
to everyday folks who think that economic fairness means the government is
going to pick their pockets. Too many of the speakers didn’t seem to get it
that economic justice needs to be sold not as a matter of right and wrong,
which never goes very far, but as a matter of raw, pocket book, self interest.
This was an opportunity to speak to the people that didn't vote for DiBlasio and explain why he is on their side. It was a chance to explain that
keeping kids in schools is cheaper than locking them up; that when police are seen as hostile occupiers, prosecutors can’t find witnesses and juries reach OJ Simpson style nullification
verdicts; that streets and subways are safer without desperate poor people; that having a stable educated work force living in affordable homes is a business magnet; that neighborhoods become and stay vital when homeowners are real people shopping
in local stores not Chinese princelings and Russian moguls parking suitcases of cash by buying $70 million condos where noone lives.
That’s why except, for Bill Clinton’s speech, and that goose
bump inducing 18 year old poet Ramya Ramana, the speeches left me alternatively yawning and
cringing. DiBlasio’s speech did the job
but comparing it on an inspiration scale to an Obama speech would be like comparing the Manhattan Bridge to the Brooklyn Bridge.
Too many of the speakers forgot that this wasn’t a stir up
the troops campaign rally. Let me be the first and last person in history to call
Harry Belafonte tone deaf. Even though he was right, what a waste of a televised teaching moment for one of America's cultural icons to blast New York’s
prison population problem as “stemming from issues of race, perpetuated by human indifference to poverty.” Who was that supposed to persuade?
How did it help DiBlasio for the Department of Sanitation
Chaplain to refer to New York City as a“plantation"? One more question. After the Department of Sanitation chaplain sits down at his desk in the morning and finishes his coffee, what exactly does he do for the rest of the day?
Then came Latisha James. This was the new Public Advocate’s
chance to introduce herself to the city
wide electorate and . . oh I don’t know…. maybe be an advocate? Instead she held the hand of a gum chewing 12 year old
homeless girl as a prop and gave a “there’s a new sheriff in town” speech.
While she was speaking, with a snow storm predicted for the
next day, you could see the
thought bubble above Bloomberg’s head that said, “Please God, if you make it
the blizzard of the century I’ll build a new wing in heaven.”
I
turned off the TV and said my own little atheist inaugural prayer:
Mr. Mayor, this is the big enchilada. Please don’t blow it . Good luck to you. Good luck to us all.
