Didja hear? Mayor Mike LOST!!! (Um, question: In real-world terms, what does anyone think he lost?)

This is Mayor Mike not taking questions Friday about the reversal of the decision to roust the OccupyWallStreet demonstrators from Zuccotti Park for "cleaning."

“The mayor lost [Friday] morning. No one who's an observer of New York politics can look at what happened [Friday] morning as anything other than the mayor backing down.”

-- Democratic consultant Scott Levenson, quoted in "Bloomberg Averted Political Suicide in Zuccotti Park, Observers Say"

by Ken

Here's how Jill Colvin begins the DMAinfo report that includes the above quote.

Allowing Brookfield Properties to drive Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park with the help of police would have been a disastrous miscalculation for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, political observers said.

“The mayor’s made some huge blunders over the last couple of years, but this might in fact have been the worst one he’d made so far,” said Democratic consultant Scott Levenson, who said the potential for violent clashes would have drastically emboldened the movement and sparked outrage not just in the city, but across the globe.

"He could not ever have recovered,” Levenson said.

Okay, I think there's a fair point here. It really does appear that Mayor Mike is finding himself on the wrong side, politically speaking, of the OccupyWallStreet situation, and I think this is certainly good news. Good news, I mean, that sniping at OWS has become the wrong side, politically speaking. Just a couple of weeks ago, who'd-a thunk it? But really, "political suicide"?

Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said the events are yet another example of reversals by the mayor, which include the removal of Schools Chancellor Cathie Black and Bloomberg's decision not to reveal the fact that Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith’s resignation was driven not by a job offer, but a domestic violence dispute.

“This is just the latest manifestation,” Carroll said.

Now Mickey Carroll, who was a metro reporter for eons before he went respectable, has covered more NYC politics than you could shake a stick at, which may be the problem: He seems to be reacting as if Mayor Mike was an actual NYC politico, subject to the usual rewards and punishments of such a being. I don't see it.

In his first term, and even in his second term, Mayor Mike had to take into account support for policy initiatives he planned, and of course for reelection when the time came -- yes, even in the second term, when he was legally barred from running again! Mayor Mike didn't let that stop him, of course; he clobbered the City Council into granting him special dispensation to run for a third term. However, I don't see any signs that he has any interest in doing it again for a fourth term. Which makes me wonder, again, what it is that makes people think we nonbillionaires have to hold over him in expression of any possible displeasure.

Mayor Mike, after all, has chosen to govern us out of the goodness of his heart and his abundance of civic spirit -- whether we appreciate his bountiful gift of himself or not. Yes, I suppose our master likes to be liked, which is touching in its way, because many plutocratic masters don't give a damn. Do you imagine that Charlie Koch cares whether he's liked, as long as he gets his way? At this point, though, I wonder how much even Mayor Mike cares.

In some ways it's nice that Mayor Mike isn't subject to the usual tugging and chiseling of mere mortal pols. Oh, he's still a valiant class warrior on behalf of the billionaire class (bearing in mind that the accusations of "class warfare" always come from the people who are actually engaged in it 24/7 and have all the resources and weapons for it, only to get sniffy when we victims don't roll over and play dead), but really, there isn't much that folks at his level need from us common folk, and he certainly doesn't need to engage in the day-to-day stinking corruption that has become the stock in trade of our "leaders."

So you can think, if you like, that Mayor Mike pulled himself back just in time from going over the edge of "political suicide." i would simply advise you against kidding yourself that he gives a darn what you think.

In this regard Mayor Mike is both more benevolent and farther above the fray than your average power-mongering plutocrat. But the same principle holds. While hardly anyone was paying attention over the last several decades, they staged their coup and took effective control of the country, or at least the interests that concern them, which include everything that has to do with money. (And what doesn't?)

The only change I notice is that the class Digby has taken to referring to as "whining billionaires" (asking, "is there any other kind?") is becoming more resentful at the cost of upkeep on their ownership of us. Probably they were thinking it was a straight one-time cash purchase, and instead they have to keep on shelling out megabucks to maintain what they believe was theirs by divine right to begin with, just the way Jesus promised them.

Ooh, it makes them so mad! Life can be so unfair.

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