What kind of guy thinks enabling Republicans would help him in a Democratic presidential bid? This guy.
No surprise, since we've been saying this all along. The circumstantial evidence was
overwhelming. Now, there's
direct evidence.
Whenever he’s been asked about his involvement in the creation of the controlling Republican-Independent Democratic coalition, [New York Gov. Andrew] Cuomo has shrugged and suggested that it’s not the governor’s place to get involved in that sort of thing [...]
But now, multiple sources with deep knowledge of the IDC and Republican conferences’ dealings confirm that in fact the governor was not a passive player in the formation of the coalition. He was “deeply involved,” they say, and “absolutely” encouraged the marriage that allowed the Republicans to remain in leadership even after the election of a Democratic majority. Furthermore, they say, the governor was a key player after the coalition launched, privately offering advice about tactics and messaging.
For some bizarre reason, Cuomo thought that the best path toward the White House was to prevent any genuinely progressive legislation from passing through his desk. He wanted a Republican-controlled state legislature to block anything of substance, and when the voters thought otherwise in this overwhelmingly Blue state, he worked with renegade Democrats to keep Republicans in power.
But then New York liberals began to rebel. The Working Families Party had a chance to earn major-party status and even seriously challenge Cuomo (polls had it within reach), but chickened out and endorsed Cuomo after he gave them vague unenforceable promises. Cuomo now belongs to them. And Cuomo thought he was out of the woods, so much so that he chose an anti-Obamacare, anti-environment, and pro-NRA conservative running mate. Because bipartisanship!
(Please give $3 to help Tim Wu stop Andrew Cuomo's hand-picked conservative lackey.)
But now, the Democratic primary is giving him fits. We'll see why below the fold.
His presidential master plan included massive re-election victory, the kind of mandate he could then parlay into a higher national profile. That goal is now threatened in two ways:
1) No one thinks primary challenger Zephyr Teachout has much of a chance of winning. She doesn't have the money, or the name ID, or the personal profile that could be parlayed into a serious bid. However, she has one thing going for her: she's not Andrew Cuomo. And with a liberal base increasingly outraged at the overt corruption and duplicitousness of their nominally Democratic governor, a dominant primary victory is now in doubt.
Critics of the governor are managing expectations, saying that if Teachout gets more than 30 percent of the vote, that Cuomo will be wounded. More neutral observers peg the number at 40 percent. Either way, it would show that Cuomo has lost his left flank, and who votes in presidential primaries? Exactly. The left flank.
But his problems now extend to the general election. Because ...
2) Tim Wu's primary challenge in the lieutenant governor's race threatens Cuomo's general election narrative. Again, Cuomo wants to win big. But here's the thing: while the primary ballot separates the governor and lt. governor lines, the general election ballot combines them. That would mean that the Democratic ballot line would be Cuomo/Wu, but the Working Families Party and Independence Party lines would be Cuomo/Hochul.
Why does this matter? Because Cuomo wouldn't be able to aggregate his votes from all the various ballot lines, potentially costing Cuomo hundreds of thousands of votes. For example, in 2010, Cuomo got 154,835 votes on the Working Families Party line and 146,576 votes on the Independence Party lines. Without those, his 63 percent of the total vote would've been 57 percent. And if you're trying to bill yourself as a serious national player, getting 57 percent of the vote in your overwhelmingly Democratic state impresses absolutely nobody.
Throw in his pro-corruption record (disbanding an anti-corruption board when it started sniffing around Cuomo's friends, because fuck you that's why), and suddenly his chances of that dominant victory become less likely. And sure, he'll still win, and New York will still be stuck with him, but this could spare the rest of the nation the unbearable thought of dealing with the Second Coming of Joe Lieberman.
The Cuomo camp is certainly freaked out enough that it is actually considering dumping Hochul. Supposedly.
Gov. Cuomo’s political operatives are eyeing a “painful scenario’’ to dump Kathy Hochul, a moderate upstater, as the governor’s running mate for lieutenant governor amid growing signs that leftist law professor Tim Wu is picking up momentum in the Sept. 9 Democratic primary.
The source is the
NY Post, so take with a grain of salt. But the danger is definitely real.
Please give $3 to help Tim Wu stop Andrew Cuomo's hand-picked conservative lackey.