Some snow fell in New York City, and everything changed?
That's what the media says. After nine years of controversy and achievement, three elections and billions of dollars spent, the snow has finally taken the bloom off Mike Bloomberg. Suddenly, overnight, his poll numbers are plunging. Suddenly, overnight, he's giving a speech with "barely a nod to Manhattan" nor any mention "of the economic virtues of Wall Street."
In the New York Times, even the headline seemed to gloat: MAYOR FOCUSES ON SMALL THINGS IN HIS STATE OF THE CITY SPEECH.
As a card-carrying member of the media, one who just put two months into a long Esquire story about Bloomberg that you can read here, I can explain what's going on. There are many Mike Bloombergs. If you're a hedge-fund partner living in the east 70s, your Bloomberg is a guy who gets it: Wall Street does God's work. If you're living near the fabulous new High Line Park, Bloomberg is a glorious mixture of Robert Moses and Lorenzo de' Medici. For much of the last nine years, partly because so many members of the media live on the Upper East Side or near the High Line, that's been the media narrative of Mayor Mike.
But for people making under $50,000 a year, Bloomberg lost the last election by 15 points. That's a lot of points. "The media was shocked because they're not in touch with the non-elites," said Joel Berg, head of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.
Back in November, Berg invited me down to the Bread & Life Mission in Brooklyn, on the border between Bed-Stuy and Bushwick. It was an impressive place....
Source: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/mayor-bloomberg-homeless-5022779?src=rss
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