No kid wants summer vacation to end, but New York’s children went back to school Thursday. The city’s biggest child, however, has decided to keep his summer fun going for at least another month.
Yes, Mayor Bill de Blasio will keep candidating across America — snarfing down corn dogs in Iowa, hiking in Nevada, telling fairy tales in New Hampshire about how happy city cops are — until he officially fails to qualify for Democrats’ October debate.
“I’m going to go and try to get into the October debates,” he announced Wednesday, “and if I can, I think that’s a good reason to keep going forward.”
At least he now admits it would be “really tough” to stay in the presidential race if he can’t make that debate.
Never mind that it’s unquestionably “when,” not “if” — and not just because he already failed miserably to make next week’s debate.
It’s conceivable that he could meet the Democratic National Committee’s demand that he raise at least $1 from 130,000 different donors across many states, though we hear it’s costing his campaign more than $70 to generate each $1 donation.
Then again, it has to be harder to raise the needed cash (and special-interest support) by selling City Hall favors when you’re never at City Hall.
More important: He hasn’t managed to cross the 1% line in any qualifying poll, and he needs 2% in four of them. Come on: This guy is more unpopular than President Trump in New York state.
Maybe he’s hoping the polling fairies will work some magic. After all, this is a mayor who actually tells the world, “Perception is never reality. It’s just not,” as he insists that he’s totally doing his day job by reading the front-page Post story about that trash-rich Queens house and calling some minions to make sure they do something about it.
De Blasio keeps cashing the paycheck and exploiting the power of his position to fund his campaign (not to mention free-for-him NYPD security on the road), but he plainly hates the job itself — and now realizes that no one can make him do it.
Which raises the question: After he finally throws in the presidential towel, will he just find a new excuse to play hooky?
