What de Blasio can teach the Democrats

Sam Smith - Whatever one may think of NYC Mayor  de Blasio, he is one of the few leading Democrats who puts working class interests at the top of his verbal agenda if not always his actual one. And as Slate reported:

America has no more left-wing executive serving more people than New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who cruised to re-election on Tuesday with 66 percent of the vote. De Blasio has more constituents than all but 11 governors; he is the primary steward of an economy the size of Canada’s.

This is a guy who told the NY Times: 

For the 20 years before I took office, there were many policies that favored a small group of New Yorkers rather than addressing the needs of the vast majority.

The way I’ve tried to address it is to lift wages and benefits for working people and provide them more direct benefits that reduce their economic burdens: pre-K, after-school, paid sick leave, the minimum wage increases we’ve done locally, and obviously the role that we’ve played in helping to get the state legislation. All of these are ways of addressing income inequality.

The reason we say “This is your city” is to show that government focused on the needs of everyday people actually can make a tangible difference in people’s lives, and that these policies change things in a short period of time.

For nearly four decades, the Democratic Party has moved away from core economic issues benefiting the working class, one of areas n which whites, blacks and latinos share common concerns. This failure helped create the Trump constituency. Trump won not only because he was a successful liar but because part of his deceit was a purported interest in voters the Democratic Party had increasingly deserted.

If the Democrats want a better course, a good place to start would be with the talking points of  a mayor of the country's largest city who won reelection with 66% of the vote.