Bill de Blasio attended an event for Al Sharpton's National Action Network earlier today, at which Sharpton praised the candidate's successful message for transcending mere "identity politics."
"What the election showed the other night is that a lot of identity politics of 20 years ago, 30 years ago has now become the identity politics of policy," Sharpton said, before referring to the fact that de Blasio and his opponent Bill Thompson both won a healthy share of black and white voters. "You can no longer take yesterday's map for today's politics."
But where was Bill Thompson? Did Sharpton snub the second-place mayoral candidate? Was this an overt endorsement for de Blasio and an implicit signal that Thompson should silence all his runoff talk? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!?
Contrary to a report in the Daily News, Sharpton told Capital New York's Azi Paybarah that he did in fact invite Thompson, but the former comptroller declined because he was "reluctant to attend out of fear it would make the unresolved count the dominant theme of the gathering."
Meanwhile, Capital has a good interview with Christine Quinn's former campaign strategist, Josh Isay, who echoes Sharpton's assessment that "identity politics" didn't hold as much sway in Tuesday's primary. Asked if Quinn should have run on being "a woman," Isay replied, "It’s not like we didn’t test it out and see if it worked. It doesn’t work. Voters want more than that...And I think if you talked to the Hillary people, they would tell you not to do it. Emily’s List people would tell you don’t do that. There’s no one who has actually run those races that would tell you that’s a smart path to take."
