You might have noticed that Bill de Blasio’s campaign signage features a lot of...red. The muckrackers at the New York Post might have figured out why. Today the tabloid revealed that in 1983—thirty short years ago—the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor visited the Soviet Union with a group of students from NYU, where the candidate was a presidential scholar. Or, as the Post explains:

Hope those Ukraine girls really knocked him out. Bill de Blasio toured parts of the communist Soviet Union as the Cold War raged, The Post has learned. The Democratic mayoral candidate — who is enjoying a huge lead over Republican Joe Lhota coming into Tuesday’s election — was “back in the USSR” in 1983 while a student at NYU. It was the same year that President Ronald Reagan referred to the country’s regime as “The Evil Empire.”

So if you add the specter of Communism, subtract Reagan, multiply by evil, and carry the 2, Bill de Blasio is...what, exactly? The Post doesn’t say. I guess we have to assume de Blasio wants to raze the luxury skyscrapers bordering Central Park and institute a completely planned economy. Why not?

We’re going to miss the Post’s brazen embrace of publishing barely concealed opposition research against de Blasio. If this is what the paper publishes the day before the election, can you imagine what they’ve got planned for tomorrow? Suggestions welcome below.

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[Photo credit: Associated Press]