New York Governor- 2014- Astornio vs Cuomo

[Morning in Atlas]

Lord no. Cuomo is probably the hardest governor to take out. Running against him is like running against someone with Christie's record in one of the reddest states in the country.

[Morning in Atlas]

Plus Schumer and Gillibrand have those U.S. Senate seats for life, so Cuomo is stuck.

Poor guy!

Poor New York. I pray they renominate Cuomo for HUD or something.

[Morning in Atlas]

The only bright side I see to this is Hochul carpetbagging into NY-23. Collins is in there for the long haul.

But yeah, the WFP better run someone. Why put up a Republican candidate when you have Andrew Cuomo?

[Morning in Atlas]

Still not impressed. Actions speak louder than words, and nominating Kathy Hochul of all people does not give me faith that a DREAM Act is high on Cuomo's agenda.

Still deciding on Teachout or Hawkins. If he was a real Democrat he would have done more to stop Judas Kline's sale of his party.

[Morning in Atlas]

Labor alternative my ass.

Cuomo should have helped elect Democrats as is. That's his goddamn job as governor. Shame on the "Working Families" Party for selling out the left-wing, and shame on Bill de Blasio for appeasing Cuomo instead of having some sort of fortitude and standing up to him.

I hope they lose their ballot line. Maybe then they can join the Democrats instead of shill for "Democrats" who are to the economic right of Susan Collins.

[Morning in Atlas]

At least they managed to give him a scare and extract some decent promises from him. It's possible he could go back on them, but that would make him look pretty bad to potential primary voters.

Considering he picked the most anti-immigration House Democrat for LG and one of his promises is making DREAMers feel welcome in their own country, I'm not optimistic.

The only way he can pull off a greater con than this is by convincing the country's Democratic electorate that he's the best for the middle class.

[Morning in Atlas]

Good f**king riddance.

[Morning in Atlas]

Why is it so impossible to elect a Republican in NY under any circumstances now?  In 1994, Pataki really wasn't a top tier candidate.  He was a little known State Senator from Putnam County.  And he beat Mario Cuomo.

Polarization.

Actually right now I'd vote for anyone (except under extreme circumstances like Paladino) but Cuomo. I'd rather vote for a Republican over a Republicrat.

[Morning in Atlas]

"I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!"

[Morning in Atlas]

"I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!"

Is Cuomo even endorsing these guys?

He hasn't endorsed yet. Also worth noting that the "Working Families" Party has backed away from Liu/Koppell too.

As far as I'm concerned, de Blasio is a Republican now too. He can be Bernie f***ing Sanders for the rest of his term - if you support Jeff Klein or Tony Avella, you have no place in the Democratic Party.

[Morning in Atlas]

Why is it so impossible to elect a Republican in NY under any circumstances now?  In 1994, Pataki really wasn't a top tier candidate.  He was a little known State Senator from Putnam County.  And he beat Mario Cuomo.

Why would they want to? Andrew Cuomo is governor.

Really what they should have done was cross-endorse him (They can do that in New York) ... which would eliminate him for contention for future office as a Democrat (because today's politics are that partisan).

Another reason to hope Hillary doesn't run, we'd get to watch Cuomo completely implode.

Unfortunately, to our new base, if two gays can get married (which the main consensus from the courts says they can), and they'll Keep Our Children Safe™, they're good Democrats, and Cuomo's done a great job at pretending to care about gun violence.

As I said before, we are the Party of Macklemore, and Andrew Cuomo is the key example of our transformation into it.

[Morning in Atlas]

"I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!"

Is Cuomo even endorsing these guys?

He hasn't endorsed yet. Also worth noting that the "Working Families" Party has backed away from Liu/Koppell too.

As far as I'm concerned, de Blasio is a Republican now too. He can be Bernie f***ing Sanders for the rest of his term - if you support Jeff Klein or Tony Avella, you have no place in the Democratic Party.

Ouch.

Harsh, but exactly how I feel. If de Blasio wants lie with traitors, he's a traitor to the Democratic Party.

[Morning in Atlas]

While there was some truth to certain parts of your "Party of Macklemore post," it was grossly exaggerated and I disagree with your ultimate conclusion.  I think that while the Democratic establishment has moved in that direction, many (probably most) rank-and-file Democrats still place a pretty high value on economic progressivism.  However, there is rarely an outlet for that at the national level and whenever there is a potential outlet at the national level, the party establishment goes into overdrive to discredit him/her (ex: all of the Fox News-style phony outrage about Schweitzer's gaydar comment, which normally would've been a minor gaffe and been forgotten in a week or two).

Which further proves my point. Elizabeth Warren seems to be the only prominent economic progressive in the party (since Fredo de Blasio sold out to the Republicans) to mainstream voters. She seems to be the "token populist" in the party, while the establishment decided to stamp out the true candidate of the people (since unfortunately Sanders can't win).

Furthermore, your thesis wrongly trivializes social issues.  Economic issues are extremely important, but the fact is that reducing gun violence, fighting state-sanctioned discrimination against the LGBT community, women's rights, etc are also really important.  It is easy for you or me to say gay marriage doesn't matter since we don't have to worry about the type of discrimination they are facing.  Whatever you may claim, we both know you'd be singing a very different tune if you were the one whose rights were under attack.  TBH, this idea that there is going to be some sort of mass exodus to the Democratic Party by poor whites if it becomes some sort of socially-conservative/center-right party while embracing extremely progressive or socialist economic policies is a bit of a pipedream.

First of all, I never said anything about trivializing women's rights in my original post (and in fact, I commended their fight for equality). If you'll recall, I said that Democrats are focusing too much on gay marriage because the issue is already being settled by the courts, and with Utah appealing to the Supreme Court, it looks like we'll have federal equality by next year. The only state that doesn't have gay marriage and is in full Democratic control is (probably) the one state that's most against it in the Union, so we have no real "gay rights legislation" to pass besides ENDA.

About gun rights, I claimed that Andrew Cuomo pretended to care about gun violence, and if you actually read my Cuomo post, you'd actually realize that I was affected by gun violence recently. This crazy f**k was on the loose one mile away from my house, carrying an assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine that, for all intents and purposes, he shouldn't have had because he had full intention to commit suicide-by-cop. That really helped me warm up to background checks, which I think is common-sense legislation.

All I said, in actuality, was that an assault weapons ban and high-capacity magazines ban were Democratic poutrage over "crime". The fact of the matter is, only 2% of shootings are done with an assault rifle, and about 12% of mass shootings use assault weapons or magazines, and most of the shootings with assault weapons are done in middle-class suburbia. What I'm trying to get at is that while a white kid in Long Island can go to school, free of harm, if people aren't allowed to own AR-15s anymore, a black teenager in Brownsville is in danger of getting shot while walking to school, and Cuomo killed de Blasio's preschool plan to keep inner-city kids safe and off our streets.

What I'm trying to get at, when talking about gun violence, is that Andrew Cuomo doesn't care about urban crime, and assault weapons bans/HCM bans are fake outraged attempts to get suburban voters to vote for the Democratic Party.

I should also add that there is no reason social liberalism and economic progressivism should be treated as mutually exclusive, despite the insistence of your "Party of Macklemore" thesis, but I digress.

Once again, you're putting words into my mouth. I'd love to have socially liberal people, overall (after all, my state is fairly conservative economically), but I'd like to see a new age of economic populism in America. We need more Brian Schweitzers in this world, not less, like the party establishment seems to think.

The reality is that, regardless of his views on social issues, no Democrats (outside of maybe the NY party establishment) want Cuomo to be the Democratic nominee if Hillary doesn't run.  Anecdotal evidence about this sort of thing is unreliable at best, but I do want to note that I have literally not met a single Democrat who has said they'd consider voting for Cuomo if Clinton doesn't run and the games he is trying to play with the State Senate, redistricting, the neutered ethics commission, etc will come back to bite him.  He done things to piss off a number of important Democratic constituencies and the ones he has been favorablish to won't support him because there will be other candidates who are good on both those issues and the ones on which Cuomo has been terrible.  Additionally, Cuomo comes across as far too ambitious, voters don't like when politicians *appear* over-ambitious (as opposed to being over-ambitious, but knowing how to not come across as such); he is also just not a very likable guy in general and that will be a real problem for him if he runs.

Unfortunately, Cuomo seems to have inherited his father's oration skills, and considering he's using them to be a powerful advocate for his "champion issues" and fooled even the WFP into thinking he's a liberal, I wouldn't call it out of the question to think that he'd pull the wool over the country's eyes again.

[Morning in Atlas]

I really don't get all the outrage and complaints over Cuomo.  As far as the pre-school plan, while Cuomo did not agree to De Blasio's plan, the state is putting into place Universal Pre-K.  The vast majority of the funding for the program is going to the city.

That explains it all. He spoke out against de Blasio's plan to pass universal pre-K because those poor rich businessmen would be taxed, and decided to pass his own plan after.

He's more concerned on bolstering his own resume than actually governing. He's the closest thing the American political system has to a Frank Underwood.

[Morning in Atlas]

I really don't get all the outrage and complaints over Cuomo.  As far as the pre-school plan, while Cuomo did not agree to De Blasio's plan, the state is putting into place Universal Pre-K.  The vast majority of the funding for the program is going to the city.

That explains it all. He spoke out against de Blasio's plan to pass universal pre-K because those poor rich businessmen would be taxed, and decided to pass his own plan after.

He's more concerned on bolstering his own resume than actually governing. He's the closest thing the American political system has to a Frank Underwood.

There was never any need to hike taxes in order to fund De Blasio's Pre-K program. He just tied the tax increase to the program so he could frame it as "rich people vs. pre-k" and appeal to class warfare sentiment. How is Cuomo "not actually governing" by implementing a pre-k program without a tax increase?

Because he directly lifted de Blasio's pre-K plan, without the tax, to make himself look "bipartisan" (in actuality appeasing the poor rich people who can't afford another tax hike).

Of course, now that de Blasio is in Cuomo's good graces, he's joined most of New York's liberals in selling out the party, and trying to forget that he ever was a "progressive". With Democrats like de Blasio and Cuomo, who needs Republicans in New York?

[Morning in Atlas]

Christie rejected Astorino's play for more money.

Because, like I said, with Democrats like Cuomo, who needs Republicans?

[Morning in Atlas]

Of course. Just saying.

[Morning in Atlas]

Steve Israel endorses Tony Avella (R-Queens) over Liu. You all know my feelings on this.

"I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!"

Is Cuomo even endorsing these guys?

He hasn't endorsed yet. Also worth noting that the "Working Families" Party has backed away from Liu/Koppell too.

As far as I'm concerned, de Blasio is a Republican now too. He can be Bernie f***ing Sanders for the rest of his term - if you support Jeff Klein or Tony Avella, you have no place in the Democratic Party.

I wouldn't worry too much about DeBlasio no longer being the great hope of liberals over this. He's clearly supporting them as part of a deal to make the state senate Democratic and help redistricting. Later he can tell them to pound salt when there's a solid majority in the senate.

Are Klein or Avella in any serious danger of a primary anyway?

Avella is looking to be in worse shape than Klein. Liu has the support of local leaders like Joe Crowley and Grace Meng and is trouncing Avella in fundraising, while Klein doesn't seem to be facing as much flack from Koppell.

[Morning in Atlas]

Yes. It's New York.