I just watched Cuomo’s press conference and it’s open war between him and de Blasio. Cuomo spent a long time entertaining the hypothetical of what it would take to remove de Blasio from office so the National Guard could be used to help police New York City. He began with these comments:
Cuomo was referring to widespread looting in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan last night. More detail on Cuomo’s remarks here.
Earlier, there was this (de Blasio’s daughter was protesting):
And, of course, there’s de Blasio’s weak response to NYPD cars running through protesters:
“And imagine what it would be like, you’re just trying to do your job and then you see hundreds of people converging upon you. I’m not gonna blame officers who are trying to deal with an absolutely impossible situation,” de Blasio said Saturday. “The folks who were converging on that police car did the wrong thing to begin with and they created an untenable situation. I wish the officers had found a different approach. But let’s begin at the beginning. The protesters in that video did the wrong thing to surround them, surround that police car, period.”
It looks like the NYPD is letting looting occur (or can’t be arsed to stop it), heavily policing peaceful protests, while showing open disrespect to de Blasio and his family, even though de Blasio is trying to placate them. Plus, Cuomo is absolutely shitting on him with zero pushback.
Is de Blasio as weak and useless as he appears? Is the NYPD an unstoppable juggernaut? Or did I miss something that people who live in NYC understand?
Chief Oshkosh
NYPD has always been like this under a Democratic mayor. Someone was telling me on this board a few days ago that it’s a cultural thing for them. OK. Fine. How do you fix that? No mayor or even chief has been able to change the NYPD. Ever. And yet it remains an enormous problem for the city and the state.
BBA
New Yorker here. We’ve been effectively mayorless since 2013.
Barbara
De Blasio seems not to grasp the essential functions of being a mayor. Presidents can delegate everything but decisions. Mayors not so much.
Anonywus
Here comes the cavalry:
https://mobile.twitter.com/AircraftSpots/status/1267674928729358336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1267674928729358336&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F33802%2Fmilitary-helicopters-descend-on-washington-in-bizarre-very-low-altitude-show-of-force
PsiFighter37
Cuomo is spot on. The NYPD let a group of rioters run in front of their convoy down 6th Avenue at 10:45pm. They will let the city burn and watch de Blasio take the blame, because nobody knows the NYPD commissioner now, and de Blasio is hated by virtually everyone.
HumboldtBlue
“They let me go .. because I am not black”
germy
MomSense
DeBlasio is a yuuge disappointment.
Amir Khalid
Why is de Blasio so afraid of the NYPD? Is he not the boss of them?
HumboldtBlue
“I hope that my 13-year-old son grows up to be just as amazing as they are.”
kindness
Growing up in the suburbs of NYC I learned early on to give NYC Police a wide berth. Rules aren’t made for them. And I was lucky in that all I was was a long haired kid, not a minority.
sdhays
@germy: Don Jr.’s ratings are down 50%? Or is that Eric?
Kelly
OMG 27%
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/27-vaccinated-coronavirus-republicans-conservatives-poll/story?id=70962377
Anya
De Blasio is such a disappointment. NYPD is out of control. They’re literally threatening the mayor and his family, leaving the city in such a disarray while assaulting peaceful protestors. It’s insane. But Cuomo is not helping the situation. He is using this moment to further humiliate De Blasio instead of putting aside politics and focusing on addressing this actual emergency.
I’ve said this before but it seems like we’re on our own in this dangerous moment. There is no leadership.
LuciaMia
@germy: I read something like that and I feel like Im losing my mind. I have never in my life wanted something bad; really, really bad to happen to another person. Just a smoking hole in the ground where he was standing.
Covid-19, you keep missing the target.
gene108
From people I know in NYC, he is useless.
Seems PD’s run city governments in most big cities, especially NYC.
PsiFighter37
@Amir Khalid: De Blasio is a lazy fool who has no interest in mayoral governance but is more interested in being a progressive thought leader.
Aleta
Changing the subject from de Blasio himself to the skills of a (the ideal) good mayor.
Ideal world: a decent mayor or city administrator or organizer, in place for 10+ years, would have on-the-ground success dealing with racial discrimination, militarized policing. Education, local health care, emergency planning and delivery. Local food banks and shelters. Would have watched distant self-interested investors drain what’s needed for good housing and hospitals.
Exactly what is absent in Kushner, Mnuchin, Trump, Pence, Bush, Cheney and the US Senators and Reps elected for ‘business experience’ and connections.
It’s been informative to watch a few mayors who seem to be able to speak to their communities. We need a lot of that experience at the federal level.
Kent
Good Grief.
I’m commenting from afar, but DeBlasio seems to be the flip-side of Trump. He’d rather just comment and snipe from the sidelines then actually LEAD when his city needs him.
The lack of planning and response to this current crisis burning down the city seems pretty similar to Trump’s lack of planning and response to the coronavirus.
The NYPD is larger than the entire armed forces of Norway and many other small countries. And the city also has an army of private security forces as well.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Anya:
He really lost the plot and showed why people don’t like him when he was answering the reporter’s question about forcing de Blasio to accept the National Guard. That’s when the whole “how do I remove a mayor” hypothetical came up. It was rambling and it didn’t help him or NYC.
Barbara
@PsiFighter37: My sense is that he was never hands on but that after his failed run for president, he is totally disengaged. His views on calling in the National Guard sound like a matter of personal ideology rather than situational assessment.
gene108
@Amir Khalid:
Strong police unions, like the NYPD unions, have incredible power over city government. It don’t fully get it, but there’s an entitlement and power there that defies all common sense, with regards to how government employees are treated anywhere else.
scott (the other one)
The next mayor should bring in a retired general — Army or Marines — to be the new NYC Police Commission, and institute similar rules of engagement: if an actual occupying force in Afghanistan can’t do it, neither can a New York City cop.
Kent
It isn’t going to be voluntary for most people. When a vaccine does arrive, most schools and employers will make it absolutely mandatory. People are going to have a pretty damn low tolerance for anti-vaxxers if it means delaying re-opening the country to pander to their idiocy.
joel hanes
@Chief Oshkosh:
NYPD has always been like this under a Democratic mayor.
It would help if toxic assholes mayors such as Giuliani did not encourage them.
Amir Khalid
@PsiFighter37:
Yes, but why is he afraid of the NYPD?
gene108
@Kent:
NYC has over 2.5 million more people than Norway.
I’m not justifying the NYPD, but Scandinavian countries are sparsely populated, and not a good comparison to us some regards.
Bruuuuce
The NY police unions have enormous leverage on the mayor. IMNSHO, they are largely responsible for the current situation here, both by their insistence on that garbage “Broken Windows” policy, and, last year, in pushing Di Blasio to bypass the normal chain of promotion when the commissioner left. He should have promoted the First Deputy Commissioner, who was black, but, after being pressured by the unions, instead promoted the white, Irish, Chief of Detectives.
If there’s one man who needs hanging in all of NYC, it’s NYPBA President Pat Lynch, for whom there is never, ever, any hint of a semblance of a shred of a wisp of an iota of wrongdoing by any NY cop, ever. Eric Garner? Pffft! Abner Louima? Brought it on himself! And I’m sure he had plenty of sympathy with Cheetolini’s full-page ad about the Central Park Five.
Pardon me while I go pet the cat. My blood pressure is already orders of magnitude too high.
PsiFighter37
@Amir Khalid: I don’t think he is. I think he’s indifferent and doesn’t want the hard responsibility of fixing the situation. He’d rather coast for the next 18 months without having to do any hard work.
Kelly
@Kent: Crazification Factor http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunch-discussions-145-crazification.html
HumboldtBlue
Oh look Donny added some security to protect him in the Chicken Wing.
gene108
@Barbara:
From the few people I know in NYC, you pretty much summed up DeBlasio. Everything he does “sound [s] like a matter of personal ideology rather than situational assessment.”
Eolirin
DeBlasio said some mildly critical things about the NYPD early on, and they practically rioted. While not much came of their work stoppage following that blow up, it did seem to effectively send the message that criticizing the NYPD in any fashion was a bad idea. And I suspect the continued failure to do their jobs here and the attacks on his family are connected to that initial flare up.
Barbara
@download my app in the app store mistermix: Agree that Cuomo’s need to be the executive in charge of everything is not effective when the situation requires collaboration. This is why Cuomo has spent so much effort trying to disable the New York Assembly by gerrymandering and power sharing agreements. So he has the ultimate power over what happens. However, in his defense re this situation, this is the second time in three months in which De Blasio has shown himself to be completely incapable of rising to the challenge of an emergency. Cuomo muscled De Blasio out of the way for the pandemic because De Blasio made it clear he would not or could not make hard decisions. He seems to have the same issue now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Eolirin: remember when Obama said a cop who had done some incredibly stupid and racist stuff had “acted stupidly”?
bemused senior
My daughter and son-in-law moved to LA from NYC, recruited by LAPD. Son-in-law is black, 7 year vet of NYPD when he transferred. He is very positive about how much more the LAPD recruits, trains, enforces policies that diminish inappropriate use of force and back up policies with technology and procedures (body and car cams, reporting verified by divisional command review of officer reports.) I worry about my daughter every day, but I am proud of her training and the obvious positive change in the LAPD from years past.
Kent
Norway also has 16,000 miles of coastline and an exclusive economic zone of ocean territory to patrol of about 1/2 million square miles reaching up to the far arctic, in addition to 150,000 square miles of land to defend. And land borders with Sweden, Russia, and Finland. The Norwegian military is also active in UN peace keeping forces around the world.
Obviously they aren’t comparable. I’m just saying that with size of the NYPD there is frankly no excuse for the level of incompetence they are showing.
Amir Khalid
@Eolirin:
So di Blasio is afraid of the NYPD. I wonder if a few well-chosen firings early in his term might have helped him assert his mayoral authority.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I said last week that when ever I see a statement from a Catholic bishop (as a way fucking lapsed Catholic) it’s like with judges, I check to see who appointed him. Archbishop Gregory was elevated (as I think they say) by Francis
scroll down to see an actually somewhat disturbing clip of The Beast and the First Ladybot. She looks at least super-medicated
Eolirin
@Amir Khalid: NYC mayors can’t just fire police officers. They’re unionized and the union is very powerful.
Kent
Saying shit is pointless. Actually DOING things to promote police reform is the point. What has DeBlasio done in that regard?
dimmsdale
@Eolirin: Yeah, I remember DeBlasio coming into office on a cloud of progressive rhetoric, and one of the first things that happened was the NYPD police union showing him who was REALLY boss. Apparently (IIRC) he advanced some justified criticism of police misconduct, showed up at a slain officer’s funeral, had the ENTIRE phalanx of cops in attendance turn their backs on him in a very public and humiliating fashion, and that was that for civilian oversight of the NYPD–since then he’s been so obsequious toward the cops that you have to assume some hidden threat (or, equally plausible, lack of character on DeB’s part).
Look, trifle with police, you better be prepared. DAs depend on cop testimony and cooperation (which can easily be withheld) to make their cases; electeds need the appearance of police effectiveness for their careers. There is a huge RW disinformation network (as we know) ready to amplify every dispute with cops into a crisis. And while I’m as pro-union as it gets, cop unions have become instigators of a victim and grievance culture among cops just like Fox News has with your aged grandparents.
One factoid to know is that when cops pulled a work stoppage early in DeB’s term, the crime rate actually WENT DOWN. And there has never been a time I can remember when so many normal citizens have been this fed up with cop tactics, and understand the ganger it poses to all of us. So maybe this is the time for it to change.
Eolirin
@Kent: Mayors don’t control the NYPD in practice. You want to see reforms, they’ll need to come from the federal level.
dimmsdale
@Amir Khalid: I think at that point he would have had to fire the entire force. And you know what? That might even be necessary, even in NYC, to get the union under civilian control–let the National Guard maintain order, and give serving LEO in NYC a “get with the new regime or get out” ultimatum. (I’m SURE it isn’t that simple, it never is; but there’ll never be a better time for something like that, than now. We just better have lots of ducks in a row first.)
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I try to forget about that. It was so humiliating and enraging.
Eolirin
@dimmsdale: I’m not sure you can even do that. What you’d likely have to do is refuse the union’s contract negotiations the next time they came up, which would result in a full strike, and then you’d have to sit that out. But you don’t have control of the timing, I think they’re not due to come back up again until 2022, and that’s all sorts of dangerous, and not just politically. You’d probably also end up with issues around solidarity with other public sector unions, like firefighters and sanitation, and that could throw the whole city into chaos.
BBA
@dimmsdale: I don’t expect anything to get better until we do the same for every police force in the country. And then there’s the problem of what do the ex-police end up doing, a huge mass of unemployed men with weapons training and bruised egos doesn’t spell anything good… Iraq after Saddam or Germany in the ’20s come to mind.
robmassing
First of all, “object-throwing.” If it was something actually dangerous surely they would have specified.
It does seem that all over the country the police are showing up in force at peaceful protests while standing down for actual violence. Even with their military grade equipment and vehicles are they afraid to do their jobs? I get that it’s scary out there but they are police officers.
Duane
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The third lady is out of it, for whatever reason. When she attempted to smile did she mouth the word “help?”
Baud
@PsiFighter37:
This is why blue areas elect Republicans. You have to take care of business before you can reach for the stars.
sdhays
@Baud: And, by the same token, it’s why there’s a Democratic governor of Kansas now. The previous Republican governor was all in on ideology and failed to “take care of business”. Louisiana too.
Martin
NYPD and FDNY unions are really in charge. Always have been. My family ran FDNY union through all of the periods when it wouldn’t allow blacks or women, regardless of what the city said – and plenty of family were in NYPD or the transit force. The culture in the unions was very much like Trump – only allow in those you trust, force out disloyal members (violently if necessary) and the force knows better than the politicians. They have always been utterly unaccountable to anyone but themselves. They don’t trust the public at large, they don’t trust city council, they don’t trust the mayor. Even under Republican mayors they would support the mayor provided the mayor let them run the show.
When you have cultures like that, you need to pull it out root and branch. A chief might nudge things a bit, but the union ultimately runs the show. I’m pro-labor, but those are unions that you have to dismantle entirely. You have to start taking parts of the city, removing all existing officers and installing brand new officers that haven’t bought into the old culture, and cycling across the entire city. And when you’re done, you’ll probably have to do it again.
I’m not kidding about this. This is my family, and these people disowned my branch entirely because one of us had the nerve to marry a black man. They are beyond reform. They need to be broken. I suspect only the feds can do that, and I’m not sure I even trust the FBI enough to pull it off.
Catherine D.
@Martin: Yeah, I remember David Dinkins. NYPD, and to a somewhat lesser extent, FDNY, treated him disgracefully. And I too have relatives in both.
Martin
@Amir Khalid: Everyone is afraid of NYPD. It’s the largest police force in the US. Larger even than the federal customs and border patrol. A few well-chosen firings and they’ll throw the city into chaos, because they can.
If diBlasio tried something like that, he better do it in coordination with Cuomo deploying national guard. NYPD and FDNY unions don’t fuck around.
FelonyGovt
My very liberal sister and brother in law live in NYC and hate De Blasio. He’s viewed as completely ineffective.
Another Scott
Steve In The should be here participating in this thread. And Popehat, also too.
(I just looked for information on how to de-certify a union, but that doesn’t seem like it will help in the NYCPD case. Maybe the DoJ needs to go after them? RICO? Isn’t anything RICO anymore!??)
Cheers,
Scott.
Mary G
The DOD is showing a teeny bit of spine:
BBA
I’m considering second amendment solutions… it scares the shit out of me, the notion that everyone will have to walk around with an AR-15 just to go to the grocery store, but if we don’t have a police force, and it’s very clear that we don’t, just a white nationalist street gang with uniforms and badges… what alternative is there?
Eolirin
@Another Scott: I think we’ll need new civil rights laws and a court that will uphold them before we have a mechanism to empower going after these groups. And even then it’s going to be messy and protracted to apply them.
Mary G
Elizabelle
Just got an email from REI. They’ve closed all their stores through June 3. Way to go, Trump and your fellow lackeys and deplorables. A real president, and we would not be having nationwide unrest. As if a pandemic you’re in denial about — and actively sabotaging — was not enough damage.
Mind you, I am not upset for REI. But thinking about the hit all the local merchants are taking, as they’ve been holding on without business for weeks already. I am proud that the vast majority of Americans support protecting our communities against the virus.
Amir Khalid
@Martin:
That doesn’t sound like a police force, more like an armed gang.
Another Scott
ICYMI, Nancy LeTourneau at WaMo:
As always with Nancy, it’s a good read.
Cheers,
Scott.
dmsilev
Jennifer Rubin:
Redshift
I’ve been wondering how much of the “mayhem” in a lot of cities is the cops doing “if we’re not allowed to beat and kill brown people with impunity, we just won’t do our jobs. Enjoy the crime!” like they did in Baltimore after Freddie Gray.
It’s the violent version of the threats they make at budget time.
janesays
@PsiFighter37: He’s setting himself up to leave office with a 2008 Dubyaesque approval rating. He’ll probably never be able to hold elected office again after this.
zhena gogolia
OT, sort of, but this guy is brilliant.
MagdaInBlack
@Amir Khalid:
There ya go. Exactly .
Steeplejack (phone)
@Elizabelle:
Just to be clear, REI stores have been closed for a while—since March 16. (Just checked.)
artem1s
@Barbara:
Cuomo called out the Guard to quarantine New Rochelle and then had them help delivering food to elderly shut ins. I think he was probably trying to say that it’s all how you use them and what directives you give them when you call them out. Yea, it came off wrong and thick. But he was probably thinking the next questions would be why he was willing to use the guard until Trump suggested it. It was a gotcha question.
PsiFighter37
@janesays: He’s probably hoping to get hired by MSNBC for a commentator gig. No way he gets elected to anything else representing the NYC area.
Tenar Arha
Did anyone bring up this story yet about the police in Baltimore looting drugs themselves?
ETA I mean, if there are incidents of police just standing around ignoring organized looting, then some of them may be more involved?
Nicole
NYC’er here; agree with everything said about the NYPD culture, and de Blasio, whom I also cannot stand.
The only positive interactions I’ve ever had with NYPD (package thief taking things from our building and in order for the security footage of the lobby to be reviewed, a report had to be filed) was when both of the officers were women. Every other time, when they were male, ugh. Especially the time I was hit by a patrol car while on my rollerblades (I was in the bike lane on 6th Ave) and the officers tried to get me to blame the brown driver of the delivery van making a turn on my other side.
My downstairs neighbor and her son had their bikes swiped last summer from Morningside park by a group of pre-teen/teenage boys who pretty much wrecked the bikes. My neighbor made the conscious choice to NOT call the NYPD on the kids and the theft when she found them, because, as mad as she was at them, she was terrified of what the cops would do to the kids.
Miss Bianca
@Amir Khalid:
Yeah, well…
prostratedragon
@Eolirin:
I wonder if the cops aren’t beginning to erode that solidarity among the unions.
A New York Magazine article from the near Before-times that summarizes both De Blasio’s waverings and the aggressive bullying of the Sergeant’s association. Note, for those who might not have known, that De Blasio’s wife, son, and daughter are Black people.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack (phone): True. But they have been open for curbside pickup for a few brief weeks now. I deleted that part of the email, so it was misleading. You are right; stores not open to the public for months.
They just had their major end of May sale.
Nicole
@PsiFighter37:
Rumor here is that his wife is going to run for Brooklyn Borough President.
prostratedragon
@Duane: More clearly than any time since her face fell during the Unauguration [sic: the type looked good on second thought].
Dorothy A. Winsor
Gov Cooper of NC has rejected Trump’s demand for a normal convention. He says there have to be fewer people and masks.
dimmsdale
@Martin: Thanks for this. This is exactly what I suspected when I was writing my post–but unlike me, you seem also to have personal familiarity with the forces at play. So the question maybe is, how to DE-culture those professions, root and branch, with full foreknowledge of how hard it’ll be. It can’t, and shouldn’t, continue like this, that’s for sure.
PsiFighter37
@Nicole: Laughable. No way Chirlane McCray wins that race.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
How observant of you…
oopzwtf
An NYPD counter terrorism official is suggesting that there is a ‘complex network of bicycle scouts’ aiding ‘antifa’ in NYC. Because just running over NYC cyclists with motor vehicles isn’t enough for them to deal with.
Expecting that they will soon report the capture of an alleged cycle anarchist, and after careful forensic examination of their courier bag contents, the NYPD will conclude that their antifa leader is a shadowy provocateur, known only as ‘General Tso’.
Moesha
@BBA: Totally agree. And I work for the city….
James E Powell
@Another Scott:
Back in my younger days I was a cook on the third shift at an all night diner. The head waitress told me that if I heard any loud arguments or drunken shouting that I was not to come into the dining room because my presence would cause things to escalate.
prostratedragon
@Nicole: My downstairs neighbor and her son had their bikes swiped last summer from Morningside park …
Plus ca change! A friend and I had such an experience back around 1970, in Central Park, and though he had a nasty bop in the head, we made the same decision not to involve the cops, for the same reason. Simply walked to a nearby hospital so he could get cleaned up.
Nicole
@PsiFighter37: Coincidentally, I said the same thing about Trump in 2016.
de Blasio was nowhere near anyone’s top of the list for Mayor, and then a lot of money came in from somewhere for the “Anyone But Quinn” campaign. When it comes to NYC politics, who knows?
Lumpy
di Blasio may be a disappointment (and more) but Cuomo is downright regressive, and spent years working hand-in-hand with NY Republicans to block common sense reforms. Cuomo stinks on ice. Don’t let his coronavirus press conferences fool you – yes, he has basic competence and looks good compared to Trump. That’s the best you can say.
di Blasio is walking a tightrope while balancing the pressures of a long-running feud with Cuomo, the need to cooperate with a hostile NYPD, Trump in the bully pulpit, and a protest he probably sympathizes with (his wife and kids are black) while understanding that any looting will ultimately be blamed on him. He doesn’t have lots of good options.
In short, nobody looks good.
I just got a text: NYC has a curfew tonight beginning at 8pm (yesterday it started at 11pm)
prostratedragon
@oopzwtf: Grand convergence of several venerable bullshit trails.
germy
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Nicole:
what was the deal with that? She was a dread neo-liberal? Quinn was an MSNBC talking head for a while, as I recall she was very good at trump-bashing, but that’s not very revealing about a public career
Elizabelle
@dmsilev: That’s excellent.
WaPost: Jennifer Rubin: It takes a village to create a monster
Accompanying photo looks like the shittiest Fox News lineup ever. Including blonde spokesbot. Ms. Rubin starts out, and takes names throughout:
And then the 2 paragraphs dmsilev excerpted, comment 64 above. And then:
Burn the whole Trump-enabling edifice down. All of it. Root it out. One of the best, and harshest, Jennifer Rubin columns ever.
BBA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Quinn was a close Bloomberg ally, and helped him overturn term limits and get a third term.
egorelick
@Tenar Arha: There was the furor over the discovery that a fire crew at the wtc had looted jeans.
Miss Bianca
@dmsilev:
@Elizabelle: J-Rub has been en fuego lately. Starting to think that of all the Never Trumpers, she’s the one I’d most like to have a
beersophisticated adult beverage with.ETA: Just read the whole thing, and now I’m really starting to wonder if some of the N-Ts lurk among us, particularly JR. She’s starting to sound a lot like a combination of Kay and Cole. Which is a good, good thing, imho.
Another Scott
@Lumpy: This strikes me as a fair take.
Cuomo and DeBlasio were both too slow off the mark on COVID-19. Cuomo has been a monster when it comes to preventing progressive policies in NY State, and he has a lot more agency than DeBlasio does. Maybe Bill liked the idea of running for Mayor (and President) more than actually being the job, but he has a lot more constraints than Cuomo does. Especially since he’s not Mayor For Life who will eventually be able to push through important reforms. The NYPD and other power centers probably figure they can wait DeBlasio out and pretty much ignore him (when they aren’t actively working against him).
Cuomo seems to be letting his BMOC persona run rampant again, and he’s beating up on DeBlasio again. It’s been a long-running theme, and it’s not helpful to making thing run better in the city in these trying times.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jinchi
I’m not a New Yorker, but I’m pretty sure this had a lot to do with it.
She worked hard to change the rules to favor a billionaire, pushing to change the rules legislatively when she discovered it was too unpopular to win at the ballot box.
And she didn’t even have the excuse of doing a favor for a leader in her own party. He was an independent who was originally elected as a Republican. It looked like a corrupt bargain because it probably was. That’s not popular among Democratic voters.
Nicole
@BBA: Yeah, seeing as how Bloomberg won a third term, I think it was really the campaign against Quinn during the primary season that sank her candidacy. It was weird.
I’ve always been of the opinion it was real estate money behind it, because de Blasio went bananas over the carriage horse ban immediately after getting into office, which had nothing to do with animal welfare (as the horses are pretty well regulated), and everything to do with getting rid of the stables on the west side so they could be sold off for development.
Mind you, I was really mad at Quinn for the third term, too. I don’t believe in term limits, but I do very much believe in respecting the will of the voters and they decided two terms was it for Mayor, but I think it was the “Anyone but Quinn” barrage of advertising that did her in. After all, she was only one vote on the council, many of them also voted to give him his third term, and plenty of them still have their seats.
PJ
@Nicole: Ha! I’d like to see how she spins her relationship to the Mayor. De Blasio is very unpopular, and recent events must have lowered his favorables even more.
RedDirtGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Memories of “Pickles” Bush!
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
No. No he is not. Supposed to be, but no.
PJ
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Quinn was Bloomberg’s surrogate and acquiesced to his third term in exchange for his support later on. Turns out Democratic voters weren’t fond of her support of overturning the voters’ will on term limits, and of supporting Republicans. Also (but this is true of many council members, including de Blasio) she was in the pocket of real estate developers.
Jinchi
For all the talk of second-amendment rights, it will become very clear, very fast, that not everyone is supposed to have them. Trump hid in the basement because a few hundred unarmed protesters were shouting a few blocks from his heavily guarded house. So he called up the military to bust heads. If black men start showing up to protests decked out like the Michigan militia we’ll see real fast where the line exactly is.
PJ
@Nicole: Quinn was also extremely pro-REBNY. She was the only major candidate running for Mayor who supported Bloomberg’s third term. It was clearly a dirty deal, and Democrats don’t like to be played like that.
Elizabelle
@Miss Bianca: Absolutely possible. I’ve wondered that too, sometimes. We know Charles Pierce has been here.
Am I misremembering that Jake Tapper showed up once, to deny that he was an asshole? Help me out, jackals.
Ruckus
@robmassing:
Is it possible that a lot of the cops agree with the far right? And wouldn’t mind a rather pale population?
oopzwtf
@prostratedragon: I dunno, seeing NBC report that an imaginary terrorist group employed a complex make believe network of bicycle scouts got a little coffee out of my nose on a rather dark day, so I thought it worth sharing. And ‘Seditious Bicycle Scouts’ might make for a decent blue state band name.
sdhays
@PJ: I’m not a New Yorker, but I thought the anti-Quinn vote was also a backlash against Bloomberg in general. I remember a weariness with Bloomberg by the end of his 3rd term. Stop and Frisk was no longer seen as a good policy, and there was very much a sense that the city was run for the wealthy elites in Manhattan rather than the broader set of people in the city. And Quinn was Bloomberg’s designated successor, which ended up hurting her.
Another Scott
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Montanareddog
@Miss Bianca:
Inorite. Esp. there is a Kay-like veneer to JR’s polemic, nowadays, and I have the same feeling
PaulWartenberg
NYPD has always been like this.
They rioted, didn’t they, under Dinkins, because he was trying to push reforms into their system? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/11/16/more-on-the-time-rudy-giuliani-helped-incite-a-riot-of-racist-cops/
Miss Bianca
@Elizabelle: I’ve heard that story too, but don’t remember being here as part of the scrum that piled on him. I’m sure it was epic. ; )
Captain C
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She was seen as a continuation of Bloomberg, who everyone was pretty much sick of. Remember that Bloomberg’s (shady as fuck) third term was won by spending a hundred million dollars for a four-point victory against an unfunded, poorly known candidate who hardly campaigned (and whose name I’d have to look up). He (Bloomberg) was even less popular by the end of that term. And as someone wrote above, Di Blasio won by having a strong early debate which got him the anybody-but-Quinn money and support.
Another Scott
@Elizabelle:
Here’s one I found – March 31, 2011 – #14.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
@Another Scott: Well done! Thank you. Bookmarked and will look through that later.
Jake Tapper just interviewed Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch books and Amazon series) the other night. Book launch of new non-Bosch Connelly novel, Fair Warning, with lead character Jack McEvoy, a journalist.