NEW YORK — The city’s tabloid newspaper front pages next week are easy to imagine: a photo of a nightmarish traffic jam caused by a strike at the nation’s largest commuter railroad juxtaposed with a shot of Mayor Bill de Blasio sunning himself on an Italian beach.

Despite the potentially damaging political optics, the Democratic mayor appears set on embarking Friday on a 10-day Italian vacation in the face of a looming Long Island Rail Road strike, which if it happens Sunday could paralyze portions of the nation’s largest city. The mayor had said he would return from his trip if a crisis arose but signaled this week that he believed his team could manage without him.

Some political consultants said the trip would look bad for de Blasio.

“If I were on his staff, and it looked like the strike was going to happen, I would tell him not to go,” said Jeanne Zaino, a political science professor at Iona College. “It’s going to look very bad, and he’s going to be hit really hard.”

The Daily News has offered a sneak peek of what could be in store for de Blasio: Its story on Tuesday about the impending strike was accompanied by the headline “Good luck on that, I’m off to Italy.”