After Hillary Clinton's defeat in the 2016 presidential election, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he believed Clinton should have made a stronger case against income inequality.
"I thought she would eventually take a stronger position on income inequality. She could have generated more support if she had taken a stronger stance, and done it sooner," de Blasio said in 2016, according to an interview with author Joseph Viteritti in a new book, "The Pragmatist: Bill de Blasio's Quest to Save the Soul of New York."
"Although I opposed the DLC (the pro-Bill Clinton Democratic Leadership Council) and its centrist politics, I had real hope for Hillary," de Blasio said, according to The New York Post.
In the book, author Viteritti said that de Blasio's late endorsement of Clinton must have been "soul wrenching" due to his support for his "philosophical compatriot," Clinton's Democratic opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the Post reported.
De Blasio was Clinton's campaign manager when she successfully ran for senator in New York in 2000, but he admitted that tensions in the campaign existed then. "There was a split within the campaign between the progressives and the moderates, and the latter won out," the New York City mayor said.
Clinton praised de Blasio on Friday, giving him credit for his work toward universal pre-schools. "Bill's work on universal pre-school was especially important to me and I strongly supported it when he was advocating for it," Clinton said in an interview on WNYC's "Brian Lehrer Show."
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