Likelihood of Success

The New York Observer catalogs, along with a scurrilously hideous caricature of the candidate’s wife, the horror — the horror! — local New York libs are experiencing at the prospect of their hated former mayor as the likely GOP candidate, and very maybe possibly winning candidate, for the presidency:

All presidential candidates have some element of hometown opposition—constituents angry about a factory closing, politicians spiteful about losing a bill or an election. But no candidate engenders as much local animus as Mr. Giuliani, whose terms as mayor were characterized by a series of spectacular running battles with various, mostly liberal constituencies.

For the first months of his candidacy for president, prominent progressives in New York mocked the notion that a pro-choice, immigration-friendly serial husband with a history of opposition to guns would have a shot at the Republican nomination.

But now, with Mr. Giuliani up nearly 10 percentage points in national polls and unexpectedly competitive in the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, a mixture of nervousness and disbelief is running through the ranks of his old antagonists.

“People say, ‘Still?’” said Mark Green, a former New York City public advocate and persistent foil to Mr. Giuliani. “If the other 49 [states] knew what we knew, he wouldn’t be in the ballpark, much less winning the game.”

It is to laugh — Mark Green! He would surely be proud, at all the East Side dinner parties, to be considered a “persistent foil” to Mr. Giuliani. But the word “tinfoil” keeps bursting through one’s mental associations, for as any local will tell you, Green is identified mainly as one of the persistent losers of New York politics, a liberal Democrat without a pogrom to his credit who still managed to lose a New York City mayoral election to a billionaire Republican in New York City. Green is most notable for finding last-ditch municipal teats, such as the preposterous political post of “public advocate,” onto which to latch, so as never have to work an honest day in his life.

Foil, indeed. To hear a strikeout king like Mark Green talk about ballparks and games — this is truly local color!