New York Mayor Elect Bill de Blasio Sets a Foul Tone

It’s been a long time since New Yorkers have had reason to worry about the direction of their city. Now things have changed for the worse in a big way. Peggy Noonan explains.

No one knows exactly what’s coming, but Mr. de Blasio’s inaugural address on Wednesday was not promising. Whether you are a conservative or a liberal, you can choose, as a leader, to be a uniter or a divider. Mr. de Blasio seems very much the latter. He is on the side of the poor and the marginalized, which is good, but he took every opportunity to jab at those who are not poor and don’t live on the margins. “Big dreams are not a luxury of the privileged few,” he said. Whoever said they were? He is a political descendant of those “who took on the elite.” New York “is not the exclusive domain of the One Percent.” Who said it was? His campaign promises—more spending, higher taxes—are not, he said, just “rhetoric.” There was a repeated refrain: “We won’t wait. We’ll do it now.”