A Sit-down with Bill de Blasio on the Future of the Democratic Party

The Democrats are in Philadelphia this week, trying to unite behind Hillary Clinton for president. At least a half dozen high-profile New Yorkers will be speaking this week, including Mayor Bill de Blasio. The mayor sat down Tuesday to talk convention and New York politics with WNYC's Brigid Bergin.

BB: Welcome back. You were on vacation last week in Italy. Did you manage to catch any of last week’s convention, the Republican convention?

De BLASIO: I have to say, this is one case where my vacation timing proved to be exemplary. I would have been even more troubled than I am having just read some of the accounts and read Trump’s speech, if I had to actually watch it all. So no, I kept it to a minimum.

But look, it’s not a surprise; there was too much emphasis on division and exclusion. And I am particularly angry that Trump denigrated America in terms of safety and order. I mean, a horrible message to the world and certainly a horrible message to our cities.

I was just was with a number of my colleagues from the Conference of Mayors and it was an affront to cities, which right now are actually the bright spots in this country, the economic engines. The places where the new America, the new diverse America is emerging, so not surprising but still very troubling.

How would you contrast it with what we heard from the first night of the Democratic Convention? 

It’s an amazing contrast, I would say one of the sharpest I’ve ever seen between party conventions. Last night was all about inclusion, about a nation that needs to come together for the good of all, a real respect for the people that make up this country, and a focus on creating a fairer economy for everyone. I mean, it was a very stark contrast and interestingly, a lot of people used words that Hillary uses, you know “love” and “understanding” and the kind of embracing phrases that once upon a time might have seemed a little corny in the political discourse, but right now seem very pertinent.

Unity is a theme they are trying to make at this Convention. But when you walk around Philadelphia, you encounter the delegates who are so still passionately supporting Bernie Sanders and you really see those fissures in the party. Do you think that hurts the party?

No, I think it’s natural and organic. The party had a hard fought primary and unlike some past primaries where the difference was between the personalities of the candidates, or where they came from or who their political support base was. This was one in which there was real ideological issues on the table.

Now, to the credit of Hillary Clinton, and I’ve said this throughout, she presented the most progressive platform of anyone who could actually be President of the United States that we’ve seen in decades. But that platform only got better through the process that led up to this convention and the engagement between Hillary’s team and Bernie’s team. We ended up with an even stronger, even more progressive platform. That’s what’s going to carry the day, and I don’t mean because of the piece of paper itself is something everyone reads all the time. I mean because we went through an organic process to determine who we are. This is what elections are supposed to be. This is what primaries are supposed to be.

We have now identified what today’s Democratic party is — it is profoundly progressive, it’s focused on addressing income inequality, it’s going to take on structural racism head on. That’s today’s Democratic party.

And the Bernie supporters who are upset — look, every campaign, every movement has its true believers who will accept nothing less than a certain outcome. That’s normal, and maybe some of those folks will go the wrong way. But the vast majority of Bernie supporters I’ve spoken to, here, in New York, over months, in Iowa when I was out there, they all said in the end they saw a lot that they could appreciate about Hillary and they certainly wanted to stop Trump.

And finally I’d say, we have to be honest, and the party has had a real reckoning in the last two or three days, that what was found in those emails that were leaked was absolutely unacceptable, did not reflect the party. It should cause anger. People had a right to be angry and the one silver lining is the party aggressively acted, issued the apology, obviously the chair resigned. That’s a pretty extraordinary act. And so something that caused pain to Bernie’s supporters came out in the open, had to be addressed and I think some of that emotion is normal.

Do you think real change is possible if so much big money is in both parties? Part of what those emails revealed was Democrats often talk about how Republicans stop change when it comes to campaign finance reform, but big money is also a big problem for Democrats.

It is a big problem for the Democrats and I think the platform that you saw whether it’s something as basic as reducing the number of superdelegates and making a more small ‘d’ Democratic party or something as big as working for the repeal of Citizens United, the platform points us in a direction of something where we’re going to reduce the role of money in politics and reduce the influence of corporate America on this party, and that has been something we’ve needed to do for decades.

The time of reckoning has come. The great recession was the trigger. As you know, the 2008 election didn’t fully reflect the great recession, it was just emerging. Then, the 2012 was first and foremost a referendum on the sitting president.

When we got to this election, we finally had the national conversation about the great recession, about income inequality, about the stratification of wealth and income in this country and it came out in the open with such drama and power and now it will lead to change in our party.

This party has to rejuvenate itself. It’s become ideologically more progressive. Now we have to break some of the dependence on corporate America and big money. We can, there’s no question.

One of the great gifts that Bernie Sanders gave us was showing us there’s a better way to finance campaigns, certainly at least at the national level, and he walked in the footsteps of Barack Obama and Howard Dean in doing that, because both of them in their cycles innovated those realities.

So we have a new thing here and a new opportunity. I think a lot of the energy here can and will manifest positively, after people work through some of the immediate issues, we have a chance to be a much better party going forward.

People look at the Democratic party within New York State and say, 'well there’s some real division there, too.' Obviously, there is the ongoing conversation, and sense of tension, between you and Governor Cuomo. Do you believe there are fundamental differences in political values between you and the governor? Is he a real progressive? And are your differences irreconcilable?

So first, to accent the positive, Governor Cuomo and I and Democrats all across the state of New York are absolutely unified when it comes to Hillary Clinton. That’s an area where people find a lot of common ground. We’re all going to work hard for her election.

On the question of the differences, I don’t think anything is irreconcilable in life. But I would say there are fundamental, ideological differences. And then I would also say there’s the issue of how the State of New York treats the City of New York. I believe, as Democrats — especially this Democratic party — this much more progressive Democratic party is called to address income inequality. It means, again, we’re going to have to break the ties with a lot of the institutions that have been deferred to in the past. It means that we’re going to have to tax the wealthy in a much more profound way, in a much more fair way.

The State of New York and I give Governor Cuomo — he has done some great things recently on increasing the minimum wage and on increasing benefits but there’s more to be done. So, my view is we need a profound consistent message from the Democratic party of New York that there is more progressive change to be made. There’s a lot more economic unfairness that needs to be addressed and we have to have a Democratic State Senate to do that, that’s a given.

And then when it comes to the more immediate issue, my first and foremost responsibility is to the people of New York City to defend their interest in Albany. I’ve said it to the Governor and I’ve said it publicly, I’d like to see him be more fair to New York City. I don’t want to see things like cuts to CUNY and Medicaid in the dead of night, you know, that would obviously undermine our city. I want to see cooperation and support for what the city with 43 percent of the state’s population, the economic engine of the state, the prime revenue generator for the state. I’d like to see the city treated with respect.

Turning to city politics for a moment, as you approach your re-election, we see the report that a really important member of your administration, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, says he’ll be stepping down by then. What qualities will you look for in his successor?

I’ll say this very broadly, I think it is not productive to get into a conversation on a hypothetical. Obviously — if Commissioner Bratton continues to serve with tremendous distinction — it is not a surprise that this stage in his career, one term was going to be enough. He made that clear before.

But I’ll just say it this way, he has been an exemplary commissioner. You know, if he called me tomorrow and said, ‘you know what, I’d love to do four more years,’ I would take him in a heartbeat. So I think the simplest answer is, I want a lot of the great qualities I see in Bill Bratton.

Would it have to be someone from within the NYPD?

Again, I don’t want to get into a conversation on something that is not ripe yet. I would say there is a lot of great talent in the NYPD for sure, but we have a commissioner. He’s done an amazing job. He and I have found over working together for two-and-a-half years a tremendous shared sense of mission. And the results? I don’t think any of us could have predicted this much reduction in crime and this much improvement in relationship between police and community simultaneously. And so boy, talk about a guy who got it right. That’s Bill Bratton.

Whoever is in that role, do you think the focus on Broken Windows policing needs to continue when someone else is leading the NYPD?

You know, having gone through the 80’s and 90’s in this city, I have a real understanding of why the Broken Windows strategy was needed and why, as a basic idea, it remains pertinent, but it has to constantly be updated, constantly improved upon. There is no room in that strategy for disparate treatment of communities. There is no room in that strategy, from my point of view, to leave it stale. It has to be constantly updated in terms of the training of our officers.

Look at what’s happening now with the summons reform the City Council achieved, with the reduction of marijuana arrests that Commissioner Bratton and I created, the retraining of officers. And then new elements in Broken Windows policing like Vision Zero enforcement. It’s an entirely different iteration than it was five or 10 years ago. So, I think when people express critiques of broken windows, they don’t want to see disparate treatment of communities. They don’t want to see over policing. Those are very fair concerns, but I think there is a little bit of a lag in terms of the facts and the numbers.

As Commissioner Bratton often says, we have 1 million fewer encounters between police and community than we did just in 2011. The reduction of Stop and Frisk, the reduction of marijuana arrests, and so many others, and we’re actually helping our police to do even less in the way of encounters with more impact. Witness 20 percent impact in gun seizures.

So I think a lot of the critique is being answered on the ground by real work, but I think the public debate hasn’t caught up with that fully.

Tonight, we’re going to hear from the Mothers of the Movement speaking at the convention. You’ve said a lot about how much progress Commissioner Bratton has made. What else needs to be done to address some of the concerns we’re going to hear tonight?

The Mothers of the Movement have done extraordinary work. And they remind us of tragedies that shouldn’t have happened — and those tragedies pull at us very deeply and require us to make reform and change.

At the same time, I have my eyes very fixed on preventing any other tragedies and I think that’s what we as a society have to talk about.

We can’t bring back the people we’ve lost. Their families deserve full due process and a fair justice system. We can devote ourselves to making sure no more lives are lost, and showing our officers they are respected and protected, and showing our communities they are respected and protected at the same time.

It is the de-escalation techniques we are teaching our officers now, retraining the entire police force, which also has not been fully examined. Every single officer in the NYPD retrained — that’s never happened on this kind of scale before — trained now in how to de-escalate conflicts, on top of which, starting next year, implicit bias training. We’re going to need this all over the country.

Certainly that horrible, tragic video from Minneapolis, or I should say, Minnesota, the indicator there that you could see that that was an officer tragically playing out biases. There was something wrong in the training there.

We need to help every one of our public servants understand if they have a bias — because we all do as humans — there is a way to systematically educate them on that and help weed it out, and help diffuse situations. We’re going to be doing that with the biggest police force in the county. So I think there will be many good people who will not end up in these confrontations, officers and community members alike, and we’ll never know their names, we’ll never read about them in the paper, because these measures will have prevented those tragedies.

Finally, can you give us a preview of your speech to the convention this week?

I’m going to really focus on the life paths of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump because I don’t think there has been a fair discussion of either.

First on Donald Trump: this guy is part of the problem. We’re in a country with massive income inequality, a huge concentration of wealth and power in the top 1 percent and even a smaller subset of that top 1 percent.

Donald Trump is part of that group that benefited and benefited and benefited and had the system rigged in their favor, took every advantage of every law. Used the bankruptcy laws in his favor over and over again. Born rich, got richer on the backs of working people.

I think when folks in this country reflect on what they learned from the great recession, and understand that Donald Trump was a charter member of the economy that brought us the great recession, there will be a real backlash against him. The fact that there is no record of him trying to address the issues of working people in any meaningful way.

Contrast that with Hillary Clinton and I don’t think she’s been given a fair shake for many years in this country. When we were at a national moment of decision on health care reform in the early ‘90s, not only did she fight for it and take on a very difficult fight, but she was the subject of a massive advertising campaign against her by the health insurance industry. Very reminiscent, by the way, of the boldness you see in Bernie Sanders and his message and his campaign, his willingness to stand up to the wealthy in corporate America. Hillary Clinton did that live on national television for almost two straight years, fighting for health care reform. What a great indicator of the kind of strength and tenacity we’ll need in a president.

So I think what happens in an election is the ultimate job interview. But like with many job interviews and hiring processes, the deepest thinking happens at the end. Not in July, not in August. Late in October, beginning of November. It’s really going to become clear to the American people. Those are two very different paths and then comes the question of when someone has to make a decision, what’s motivating them, what’s their life experience. Then it’s not even close.

People want economic justice and Hillary Clinton is the kind of person that can actually get it for them and Donald Trump would not even know how, because he’s lived his life in a manner that just deepened economic injustice.