Hillary for Mayor?

Hillary Clinton, fresh off her defeat by Donald J. Trump, is said to be considering a comeback via a run for mayor of New York City this very year. Or at least some powerful New York Democrats who can't stand current Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio—thanks partly to the dirtier, more disorderly public spaces that are now the order of the day under live-and-let-public-urinators-live de Blasio—are eager for Clinton to take him on in the primary where he will seek a second term. And since 79 percent of Gothamites voted for Hillary in November, why not? Trump-hating, Hillary-loving New York Timescolumnist Frank Bruni is already salivating:

City building inspectors start to show up daily at Trump Tower, where they find a wobbly beam here, a missing smoke detector there, outdated wiring all over the place. City health inspectors fan out through Trump's hotels, writing citations for clogged drains in the kitchens and expired milk in the minibars.

The potholes near his properties go unfilled. Those neighborhoods are the last to be plowed. There's a problem with the flow of water to his Bronx golf course, whose greens are suddenly brown.

But if I were Hillary Clinton and I were the least bit superstitious—and who isn't?—I'd start thinking about the last person who decided to stage a comeback from a stinging political blow by running for mayor and taking on Bill de Blasio.

That person would be Anthony Weiner. On a recent plane flight I switched on Weiner, the 2016 documentary that chronicled his 2013 mayoral campaign two years after his abrupt resignation from the Brooklyn-based congressional seat he had occupied for more than a decade. The resignation followed revelations that Weiner had texted selfies of his shirtless torso, and more frequently, of his underpants while he was wearing them, to a range of females—and had also not been exactly honest when confronted with the evidence. Then, in July 2013, just after the polls showed him siphoning off 40 percent of likely voters from his rivals, another sexting relationship surfaced involving a 22-year-old woman and Weiner using the moniker "Carlos Danger." The film ended after Weiner's ignominious defeat in the 2013 mayoral primary but, sadly, before the third sexting episode that proved to be his coup de grace in 2016: that selfie of his underpants with him in them taken while his 4-year-old son lay sleeping next to his leg.