If Joe Biden wins, the 2024 Democratic nomination is either his or Kamala Harris'. But great to see Andrew Cuomo is polling strong. He'd be an excellent president.
Based on what? Besides its media management aspect, his COVID-19 response was pretty awful.
It was so awful that his approval rating skyrocketed?
Yes. This happened for lots of leaders around the world (our very own BoJo's approval only started to drop after Dominic Cummings had a personal scandal; the total neglect of care homes didn't matter until then). In the short term and hopefully not the long term, it turns out that you can still be almost criminally incompetent and win credit in a crisis so long as you sound like you're in control and reassure people in a state of mass panic and the media markets catering to them.
That said, in a competitive race a while later like a Democratic national primary or a general election, Cuomo's record would probably come under more scrutiny and that's where it would begin to fall apart.
New York, at least was few weeks ago, one of the few states that had one of the slowest grows in new cases. Regardless of that, his list of liberal accomplishments is pretty long: Was among the first pass same-sex marriage, enacted strong gun control laws, protected women's choice, raised the minimum wage, passed a meaningful college tuition bill backed by Bernie and a family leave program, among many others things. Considering he had eight years of a Republican state senate, that's not a bad track record.
I really don't get the disdain for him. I'm not saying everything he's done is just fine, but it's hard to overlook his accomplishments. As president, he'd be one of the most liberal (and most experienced) ones in history.
Cuomo "reformed" Medicaid so that it was cut during the COVID-19 crisis, even as his state was among the worst hit, even as Chuck Schumer attacked him from the left and threatened to withhold aid if he enacted said reforms. That his state has slow growth after the virus has already ravaged much of it is small comfort: the principal challenge of coronavirus wasn't to completely eradicate it, but to flatten the curve such that medical capacities were not overwhelmed (meaning that people whose survival was dependent on care received it). He seems to have failed on that front.
As for the rest of his record, it's certainly not the worst, but the Republican state senate was somewhat less obstructionist than most because it depended on an IDC willing to pass some bills. Cuomo could have organised the formidable party machine to fight the IDC much earlier, but that was left to unconnected organisations which mobilised as late as 2018. He would not be one of the most liberal presidents in history except, perhaps, on social issues and even there he is probably less so than most of the 2020 primary field.
