text: Mr. de Blasio goes to Washington: Sure, the mayor can be sanctimonious — but his national Progressive Agenda is actually a timely and important political play - New York Daily News
  Mr. de Blasio goes to Washington: Sure, the mayor can be sanctimonious — but his national Progressive Agenda is actually a timely and important political play
  Big ambitions (Kevin Wolf/Kevin Wolf)
  As Mayor de Blasio left the city this week to push his progressive contract with America based on what he's called his "historic," "transcendent" record here, his ego seemed to overshadow his accomplishments in the eyes of many New Yorkers. His approval rating fell to 44%, a new low, and more voters than not told Quinnipiac his involvement with national issues is distracting from his duties here.
  It's indeed discordant to hear de Blasio in Washington — recycling his electioneering number about how 46% of New Yorkers lived in or near poverty at the end of the Bloomberg years, a number that hasn't budged under his watch — boasting about his record here even as his own police commissioner warns crime may be about to go up. As slow-motion crises at the city's jails, in its homeless shelters and at city housing continue under his watch.
  But those gripes miss the point. De Blasio has political capital that must be spent now or squandered, and he's using his high profile with progressives to push an excellent agenda — one that could pay real dividends over time for New York City and the nation.
  Here's what he's calling for, along with other left-leaning city, state and national Democrats: Paid sick leave. A higher minimum wage. Universal pre-k. An expanded Earned Income Tax Credit. And more.
  In short, a national plan for making work pay and for helping working Americans who've been left behind as Wall Street's rising tide lifted only their own yachts .
  In the absence of a real primary challenge to her candidacy, he's trying to push Hillary Clinton, who's taken just 13 questions from the press since announcing — six of them variations of "How do you feel about Iowa?" — to the left.
  De Blasio was full of it to tell Rolling Stone that his election — effectively won in a five-way Democratic primary through a mix of smarts, luck, hard work and dark money — shows where New Yorkers' hearts are really at after 20 years of fluky non-Democratic rule. His whine in that same interview that his greatness hasn't been sufficiently appreciated at home was rightly mocked.
  But for all that, he has good reason to talk himself up. It was by claiming an historic mandate that he was able to force Gov. Cuomo to give up the money for the universal pre-K program he promised and then delivered to New York. That had to happen in year one, when the mayor had just won office and the governor was running for reelection.
  Similarly, de Blasio didn't schedule the presidential election or clear the Democratic field for Clinton. But that's opened a fortuitous window to jawbone on the national stage, and to earn some of the vastly valuable TV time already dedicated to the race.
  Yes, de Blasio raises his own profile in the process, and uses some bandwidth he could otherwise dedicate to the city's immediate needs. But as he's said, we expect a mayor who can both walk and chew gum.
  Even if Clinton ends up in lockstep with de Blasio's agenda, it's got no shot as long as Republicans control Congress. As we've seen over the last six years, a President can only do so much alone.
  But in pressing Clinton, de Blasio is also doing the scut work of party and movement building, seeding a new generation of leaders who can press pols a step up, and some of whose members can eventually take that step themselves.
  The idea, as longtime de Blasio ally Dan Cantor of the Working Families Party has explained, is to build power at the state level, knit that into a national network and use it all to push Democrats leftward.
  Sure, de Blasio can be hectoring, sanctimonious and self-aggrandizing. What mayor hasn't been? The question is what his peacocking delivers.
  He could indeed end up, as the News editorial page put it, becoming "America's public advocate," and repeating the Dinkins years, when the mayor went time and again to Washington, hat in hand, to plaintively plead with a Democratic Congress for funds that were never going to come.
  But he's not there yet. To his credit, he's plainly said inequality isn't a problem a mayor can solve alone, and that he won't wait for Washington to get things done here. None of that means he shouldn't try to influence the national conversation.
  To do that, though, he needs to live up to his promises here. To prove a progressive Democrat can govern more equitably for New Yorkers who felt priced out of Bloomberg's "luxury city," without killing the golden goose.
  I have my doubts, but here's hoping the master jawboner can keep his winning streak going. If he does, I'll live with him boasting about it endlessly thereafter.