Give de Blas de Boot!

AMEMORABLE line from Lily Tomlin fits the occasion. “No matter how cynical youou get,” she said, “you just can’t keep up.”

She could have been talking about Mayor de Blasio.. His slippery char-character and transactionall mayoralty make it impossible to be too cynicalnical about his next move. However low thehe bar, he manages to slither under it.

Recent events removee all mystery about who and what de Blasiosio is. He lectures others on their failingsgs — in this case, MTA management — without a shred of embarrassment about the chaos roiling many of his administration’ st io n’ s key agencies.

He preens about his team’s ethics even as each day brings neww revelations about the rancid pay-to-play operation he runs at City Hall. With insidersiders now spilling the beans about how his government did the bidding of donors,s, the examples of bought-and-paid-for favoritism av or it is mareun de- undeniable.

The combination of arrogance, arrogance, in com-in competence and corruption on is too much to bear. New York needs a new mayor.

Four more years off de Blasio would undo 20 years of progressess at making New York both a livable cityty and an interna-international mecca. He’s turningning back the clock to the worst days of Tammanymmany Hall, when honest government wass an oxymoron.

De Blasio throws taxpayerpayer dollars down every rat hole in a bid to buy votes, all the while denouncing the capital-capitalist system that providesdes the millions he’s squandering.ing.

He promises to helpelp the less fortunate butut virtually all his policiess drive bigger wedges between races and ethnic and income groups. He vows to improve education but does little more than fatten the unions and dumb down schools so more kids get diplomas they can’t read.

Perhaps worst of all, his slogans about addressing income inequality are nothing more than a fig leaf for his national ambitions.

That’s what re-election is really about for him: becoming a national player, and possibly running for president in 2020. If he wins this November, he would immediately start stumping for leftwing candidates in the 2018 midterms, meaning his focus from the day he took the oath for a second term would be on everything except City Hall.

Facing term limits, he’d be on the road even more than he has been so far. His proposals would be aimed at getting national attention, not making the city better. He’d be more radical than ever. His plan to open scores of homeless shelters in residential neighborhoods could become a divisive reality, as would his promise to close Rikers Island and distribute prisoners around the five boroughs. We can do better. Yes, I know the odds are very long and the old truism that “you can’t beat somebody with nobody.” It’s also a fact that, with the elec- tion less than four months away, there is not yet a single alternative who can put togethergether a wwinning coalition.

But we llive in an incredible age when everything — and anybody — is possible. To say thattha New York is required to rubber-ber-stamp a bad mayor is to give up on the city’s futurefutur and all the remarkable people who live anda work here.

It’s late, butb not too late. If the city is half as tough anand half as smart as it thinks it is, voters wilwill not roll over and accept four more years of cheap tricks and failed leadership.

De BlasiBlasio won in 2013 when less than one in foufour registered voters turned out on ElectioElection Day. He was full of bad ideas then, and now we see their rotten fruits. Enough.

You can get into endless arguments with New YorkeYorkers about President Trump — as I have — bbut one way to bring agreement to most coconversations is to mention the disastersaster of dde Blasio. Suddenly all the heads nod in the same direction because many hard-core Democrats have no use for him, either.

Yet, so far,fa the widespread grumbling is just that. AAnd it will come to nothing unlessless all the grumblers take it upon themselvesselves to ddo something about this year’s election. Pick a ccandidate, give your time, your money anand your vote. Speak up, write to your friends and neighbors with yoyour ideas about what you are doing to help save New York.

Don’t just throw up your hands and complain. Your city needs you, and you are not alone.

It’s time for a change.