In this moment of jubilation for Democrats and progressives--even Indiana and North Carolina have gone blue--one open wound remains: the voters of New York City, who, for nearly sixteen consecutive years, have ceded Gracie Mansion to deeply anti-progressive men. As Michael Bloomberg's bid for a third term proceeds virtually unimpeded, that winning streak seems set to expand to twenty. New York City, wild child of American metropolises, bastion of political liberalism? Well, deep in its heart, maybe. But not among its leadership, not in a long time.

Bloomberg would have it that he is a center-left technocrat, a liberal even, from the uppermost upper crust. It's part of the mythology that made him victorious in 2001. He had abandoned the city's cannibalistic Democratic Party not because he left the left, but because he wanted to win. During his first campaign, Bloomberg proclaimed himself to be a "professional manager, not a professional politician"--soothing words for a city still climbing out of 9/11's wreckage.

But, as is often the case with opportunistic politicians, Bloomberg's rhetoric bears little relationship to his record. Beyond the confines of his tireless propaganda machine, there is one salient fact: the Bloomberg Administration cannot point to one major success and credibly claim it as its own. The technocracy he promised has, in practice, more closely resembled autocracy. The center that he claims to occupy has often given way to the right.

There have been stabs at greatness, certainly. The city's bid for the 2012 Olympics, which he oversaw, was a mark of grand ambition. Yet the International Olympic Committee was unconvinced, in large part because of another Bloomberg failure: that of the doomed dream for a football stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. Both the Olympic bid and the West Side stadium proposal generated reams of newspaper headlines and volumes of architectural schematics, but no finished products. Even a more modest initiative, the Atlantic Yards Project, which would create a basketball arena in Brooklyn, has gone absolutely nowhere. And of course, Ground Zero has sat dormant throughout Bloomberg's entire administration.

Bloomberg's congestion pricing scheme, which he championed as if the city itself depended on it passage, was another epic failure. In retrospect, it doesn't even appear to have been tackling the right problem; a recent study authored by the city's own deputy transportation commissioner founder that, while Bloomberg was pushing congestion pricing, congestion remained steady. The smart policy would have been a concerted effort to further expand mass transit capacity. In the wake of congestion pricing's defeat, Albany lawmakers put forward a plan to increase mass transit funding by taxing the state's wealthiest citizens. Bloomberg opposed the plan.

The one major event that Bloomberg has successfully lured to New York City is--wait for it--the 2004 Republican National Convention. This was a convention intended to exploit New York City and the terrorist attack from which it had recently suffered. Among convention planners, the intention was explicit, as this 2004 New York magazine article documents. Yet Bloomberg trumpeted the convention as an economic boon to the city (despite little available evidence), and lavished his personal millions upon the RNC. The rhetoric of Bush's fall campaign, heavily predicated on his response to 9/11, was to a large degree legitimized by the New York City convention. Bloomberg, probably more than any other New Yorker, helped facilitate a second Bush term.

And yet. Despite this assemblage of failures and embarrassments, Bloomberg backers will argue that the Mayor has three trump cards: the economy, the crime rate, and education. Indeed, the crime rate in New York City has been at historic lows throughout Bloomberg's administration. But there's little evidence that anything Bloomberg has done is responsible. Criminologist Franklin Zimring, in his book The Great American Crime Decline, argues that Rudy Giuliani's crime prevention measures during the 1990's--COMPSTAT and the commitment to efficiency it represented, additional police on the beat, and a more aggressive policing philosophy--were responsible for the historic drop in crime that Bloomberg merely inherited. Let's call Bloomberg's approach to crime what it is: Giuliani-ism with a kinder, gentler face. That's hardly something progressives should write home about.

As for the economy, whatever success Bloomberg has enjoyed can be attributed to others--and the success is overshadowed by failure. The city's economy, as measured by overall growth, boomed between 2001 and 2007 because the financial services sector boomed. At the same time, Bloomberg did nothing to combat the decline of New York's middle class. Income disparity has spiked so much in recent years that, in 2006, a Brookings research,er Alan Berube, could declare that, in New York, "the middle class is missing." New York has the smallest proportion of middle-income families among all major American cities.

What about education? Surely Bloomberg's achievement of Mayoral Control and concomitant abolition of the dreadful Board of Education has resulted in better public schools? Not exactly. As a recent article in the journal Education Next showed, it's possible to look at the wealth of New York City education testing stats and come up with virtually any conclusion. Diane Ravitch, the eminent education historian, has been especially vitriolic, arguing that the testing gains Bloomberg claims as his actually occurred under Giuliani's term. Sol Stern, another education mind associated with the right, goes to the heart of the matter: mayoral control, rather than resulting in an improvement in education, has really only resulted in an improvement in the mayor's capacity spin.

That Ravitch and Stern would be at the forefront of Bloomberg criticism should be surprising, but it's not. New York City progressives have capitulated to the mayor's spin machine throughout his Administration. As his try for a third term begins, it's worth considering whether or not the legacy of Mike Bloomberg will be proof, once and for all, that money can buy anything--including respect for a record that, if it exists at all, is largely unaccomplished.