#President Joe Biden needs New York Mayor Eric Adams to save him

In the normal course of politics, a mayor gets a boost when a president comes to town. But President Biden’s scheduled visit to Mayor Adams this week flips the script.

Biden is coming to New York Thursday to get a boost, not to give one. Sinking below the horizon, the president needs Adams more than Adams needs him.

The ostensible reason for the trip is to talk about crime, which is ­Adams’ strength and Biden’s weakness. Indeed, a major reason why the president is a failure is that his administration, and Democrats in general, are viewed as anti-police and pro-criminal.

It’s a reasonable view, with the decision to open the southern border to virtually all comers as one example. Another is that the far-left wing of the party pushed to defund the police in 2020 just as violence erupted across America.

A third is that its progressive district attorneys in major cities, including New York, act as if criminals are the real victims and thus refuse to prosecute too many cases.

Biden himself has contributed to the soft-on-crime image. He often denounced what he calls “systemic racism” in law enforcement and has said almost nothing about soaring murder rates in most cities. He has demonstrated no compassion for victims, and offered no serious ideas on how to stop the bloodshed.

On the border crisis he created, he actually said his team was trying to “figure out” why so many people from Central America are desperate to get into the United States.

Get that man a clue!

Soft-on-crime issue

Enter Adams, who has been drafted to help Biden get on the right side of law enforcement in advance of the midterm elections — or at least make it look as if that’s the case. The mayor is practically giddy about his role, and spoke about Biden as if he were making a campaign commercial.

“I love the fact that the president is coming here,” he told reporters. “I met with him after the campaign, and we spoke and we just connected, you know.”

Adams called himself the “Biden of Brooklyn” and said it’s because they are both “blue-collar guys.”

The Welcome Wagon chatter notwithstanding, Biden is coming because Adams is emerging as the ­antidote to the Democrats’ far-left lurch. A black former cop who spent 22 years in the NYPD, he complicates the screed against law enforcement as inherently racist and could lend credibility to Biden’s need to be seen as doing something about crime.

Although the visit is understandably flattering to Adams, its impact for him will be fleeting. After securing the mayoral primary, he promised to be the new face of the party and said he would show America how to run a city.

If he fails to meet those ambitious goals, Biden won’t help. If he succeeds, the visit will be a footnote.

The stakes are much higher for the president, and the timing adds to the importance. Biden is coming to Gotham in the aftermath of the funerals of the two young murdered NYPD cops and when the politics of crime dominate the city.

With an enormous law-enforcement presence turning Fifth Avenue into a sea of blue, last week’s funeral for officer Jason Rivera was marked by his widow’s dramatic denunciation of the plan by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg to go soft on criminals.

Her eulogy was an emotional crescendo, and the Wednesday funeral of Rivera’s partner, officer Wilbert Mora, will compound the sense that the city is losing a war of survival. While shootings, carjackings and assaults are almost routine, the murder of the two cops rattled New Yorkers to the core.

Fear is spreading like wildfire. That’s why a large coalition of business and civic groups that include the leaders of industries that represent some 3 million jobs is backing Adams and calling his plan of attack “courageous.”

Getting on that bandwagon is how Biden can really help the city — and himself. Although he will no doubt promise to heed Adams’ request to use federal law enforcement to stop smugglers from bringing more guns into the city, that won’t mean much unless cops can seize more of the illegal guns that are already here and lock up those who carry and use them.

Lean on lefty Dems

For that to happen, Biden must lean on Dems in the City Council and Albany and get them to fully support the mayor’s efforts.

For example, new council speaker, Adrienne Adams (no relation to the mayor) objected to his promise to create new police units focused on getting illegals guns off the street. Why doesn’t Biden urge her to give the mayor and his new police commissioner a chance to do it their way?

In Albany, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said no to Adams’ demand for changes in the notorious bail law and the Raise the Age law, which prohibits most criminal prosecutions for suspects under 18.

Biden could earn his keep by getting on the phone with Heastie and Stewart-Cousins and explain how important it is for Democrats everywhere to be seen as supporting commonsense initiatives to prevent crime and save lives.

Gov. Hochul, meanwhile, owes Biden big time. She got her job after the president said Andrew Cuomo should resign over sexual-harassment allegation, a move that signaled the death knell for the disgraced Cuomo.

Biden could remind Hochul of her debt and urge her to get off the fence and get the Legislature off its ass. So far, she says she wants to help Adams stop gun trafficking, but has sided with Heastie and Stewart-Cousins by rejecting the mayor’s demands for changes in the bail and Raise the Age laws.

Come to think of it, Biden’s visiting the wrong city. If he really wants to help New York win the war against crime, he ought to go Albany. Twisting arms there is where he could do the most good.

Fear Of, & For, NYC

Readers from outside New York are watching the city’s decline with sadness and alarm.

• Rich Rogers writes: “The New York I knew is gone, so I voted with my feet and we now enjoy life in Jupiter, Florida. Moving here feels like going from East Germany to West Germany.”
• Reader Philip Lastreto, from California, writes that he and his wife often visited the city. “We took our granddaughter to stay at the Plaza to enjoy the Eloise experience, hired limo drivers to and from JFK, taxi drivers throughout Manhattan, shopped at Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s etc. and dined at Elio’s on Second Avenue.”
• “All these things are unlikely to happen again for us until New York is safer.”
• Reader Jim Philips writes:“I live in Alabama, but have a daughter in grad school in your city. I fear for her safety, and the safety of others, on a daily basis. Is there no respect within the New York political establishment for the honest fears of a father?”