Bill de Blasio smiled at the activists, who washed him in waves of applause. “The best thing we can do is keep winning progressive victories,” he said. “Superficial democracy isn’t good enough.”
The progressives who have taken possession of Gracie Mansion and the New York City Council are fond of chatting of historic moments. After a dozen years of a billionaire’s version of quasi-liberal government, they are not shy about doubling down on their ambition. They want to take a city focused intently on the top and train its eyes on the remaining 97 or 98 percent.
They played a sometimes bare-knuckle game to get here. The greatest torrent of so-called independent spending in the last election came from the teachers’ union and a group ostensibly opposed to carriage horses but closely aligned with the de Blasio campaign.
When a primal tug-of-war arose to control the City Council, Mr. de Blasio cut a deal with the Brooklyn Democratic boss to hand the speakership to a progressive. Asked by reporters what he had traded away, the mayor-elect offered the laugh of a non-answer.
Ideological discipline is central. It will be a rare Republican, Mr. de Blasio has suggested, who takes a senior position. “They have to share our values,” he said. “That might be a high bar.”
But for all their self-assurance and claims made about historical turning points, the progressives have yet to define themselves. How will they distinguish themselves from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose policies on housing, the streetscape, transportation, public health and taxis edged noticeably to the left?
A forest of question marks rises around the new mayor. He was a political operative, a public advocate with little power and a Council member who stood in the liberal mainstream. Now he carries a standard for urban progressives. What is the nature of his vision?
There is more at stake than his success or failure. New York City has taken its place in a row of global jewels: Paris, London, Los Angeles and Berlin. Turbocharged attention to wealth and privilege has become central to how these cities define their economic advantage.
In this city, inequality has reached appalling levels, and a growing body of research finds that the chasm could poison economic growth. New York has added jobs at a fast clip, but most offer low wages and come without the benefits that are markers of civilized societies. Affordable housing is a wellspring turned dry.
The de Blasio family embodies middle-class anxiety about the direction of New York. They lived in a modest Park Slope rowhouse with three bedrooms and a single bathroom. It is worth north of $ 1 million. But the children’s generation could have difficulty finding a reasonably priced apartment anywhere near the city’s core.
Can progressives raise taxes, hold down rents and build dikes against the waves of riches without spooking the wealthy? Can they preserve benefits and wages that allow pensioners and municipal workers alike to scrape by without emptying the treasury?
“Politicians see a tremendous market out there now for progressive rhetoric,” said Elvin Wyly, a geographer at the University of British Columbia and a chronicler of the gentrification of America’s cities. “But retail presentation of these politics is not the same as dealing with the fundamental production of inequality.”
A transition committee for Mr. de Blasio recently considered candidates to run a meat-and-potatoes city agency, the sort to which most New Yorkers give little thought unless its services fail.
Which qualifications, the chairman asked, do we desire? “A progressive,” a committee member offered. A progressive, another chirped. Nods and assents. A progressive, definitely.
Put to the side esoteric questions of whether there can be progressive garbage collection or firefighting. Defining the word “progressive” can prove elusive.
Yahoo Local News – New York Times
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