On the whole, we’d rather be in Philadelphia: That was the bad news Democrats delivered to the Big Apple on Thursday.
The 2016 Democratic National Convention will be held in the City of Brotherly Love. Despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s full-court press for his home borough, Brooklyn has been left on the outside looking in.
Like the mayor and many other New Yorkers, count us among the disappointed. Not only would the convention have meant welcome business for the city, it would have given the mayor added incentive to keep this city safe and prosperous for when his fellow Democrats arrived.
But it was not to be.
For one thing, whatever enthusiasm Democrats might have had a year ago, some plainly worried about holding a convention in a city where the progressive Democratic mayor was at war with his own police force.
That wasn’t Democrats’ only worry. As The Post reports, fears were that the corruption of Democrat-dominated Albany might overwhelm whatever message the party hoped to send.
Especially if a convention ended up coinciding with the trial of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Far safer to go with the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.
So, New York: Think political high jinks are no big deal? Guess again. Preet Bharara’s “Stay tuned” casts a wide shadow.
New York has the money. New York has the infrastructure. But as the Democratic Party just reminded us, thanks largely to our politics, New York doesn’t provide an image Democrats thought would prove attractive to voters across America in 2016.
And Brooklyn has just paid the price for it.