Anthony Weiner's Offensive Campaign for Mayor

The most offensive part of Anthony Weiner’s campaign for mayor isn’t the fact that he’s running. It’s the conceit that New York should become the “middle-class capital of the world”–that the melting pot should be divided into Marxist categories, that the Big Apple should be less than the stage for the biggest dreams.

It’s all contrived, anyway. It’s painful to watch Weiner–who still makes $500k a year somehow–strain to look like an ordinary family man, to seem interested in the stories of local shopkeepers. His first pitch is that housing is too expensive in New York–perhaps he plans to run on the Rent Is Too Damn High ticket?

It’s laughable to hear Weiner complain, as if he cared, that business owners in New York are “drowning in regulations that nickel and dime you to death.” This from a guy who pushed Obamacare and just about every terrible regulation in Congress. (Weiner even once claimed to have written the Obamacare bill himself.)

It’s stomach-churning stuff, and a reminder that the worst part of the Weiner scandal was not anything to do with sex but the fact that he launched a staggeringly ambitious campaign of lies once the story broke. His campaign for mayor is based on false premises about New York, and about himself. It’ll be hard to watch.