If you're of a certain age and were paying attention to politics in 1988, then you know that, apart from Michael Dukakis looking like the "Great Kazoo" of Flintstones fame during his ill advised helmet-wearing ride in an army tank, what really sank his hopes for the presidency was the Bush campaign's Willie Horton ad to illustrate that Dukakis was soft on crime.  Willie Horton was a convicted felon who, while serving a life sentence for murder, was the beneficiary of a weekend furlough program championed by Dukakis.  Horton never returned from his furlough, and, while a fugitive, he committed assault, armed robbery, and rape before being captured in Maryland, where he remains in prison to this day. 

Skip ahead to 2020 in New York City, and here we have a mayor who is arguably more liberal and farther to the left than Michael Dukakis could ever be.  So when faced with a public health crisis and the spreading of the COVID-19 virus, what could possibly go wrong by releasing more felons into the population for the sake of improving social distancing in prisons?  The answer is a lot.  Just ten days after being released from Rikers Island, an East Flatbush man attacked and raped a woman.  In fact, according to the New York Post, "police responding to a 911 call found Robert Pondexter, 57 — and his crack pipe — at around 5:45 AM Saturday."  Pondexter had allegedly grabbed a random woman on the street by the collar and dragged her into a school parking lot, where he choked her and forced her to perform oral sex.  As the rape began to escalate, the victim was able to kick Pondexter away and escape.  Pondexter was being held on Rikers Island on a previous rape charge but, like Willie Horton, was released on April 15 as part of de Blasio's social distancing effort in New York prisons.

Not since ending bail and offering Mets tickets at arraignments has de Blasio looked as stupid or inept at his job.  Not even the coronavirus snitch line he set up could save the victims of this blundering boob, whom New York liberals embrace with the same passion with which the Bolivian guerrillas embraced Che Guevara.  But try as he might, de Blasio is no Che, and in this case, New Yorkers would do better to follow the lead of Fidel Castro and dismiss him from office.

Johnny Ray is a conservative vlogger whose television show, Living in The New World, can be seen on The Cape Cod Channel via the Amazon Fire TV, Roku TV, and Android TV applications, as well as on the web at capecodchannel.com and johnnyraytv.com.