How does Cuomo survive the impeachment trial in the senate?
Switch party registration to Republican. Cut a deal with Trump to rally Republican support for him in exchange for a pardon. Then call in every last favor he has with NY Senate Democrats to get them to vote not to convict. I'm assuming he knows where the bodies are buried and can blackmail/intimidate/whatever a few people to vote in his favor.
This entire idea is nonsense.
1. The only thing keeping Cuomo barely afloat right now are the partisan Democrats that choose to look the other way no matter what he does because of the D next to his name. The Republicans aren't just gonna suddenly embrace the guy that they've despised for the past decade just because he suddenly swapped to being a Republican.
2. Why would the Republicans even want Cuomo? The guy likely won't be able to win the GOP primary nor the general in 2022, and he can't really block much legislation since the Democrats have a supermajority in both chambers. They'd be taking in a man they despise and someone who's got numerous counts of sexual harassment...for little/no gain.
3. If Cuomo is switching to the Republican party, why would any senate Democrat, even those that are currently his staunchest allies, stick by him? He'd basically be stabbing the party in the back and then asking said party to bail him out. If anything, switching his affiliation would make his impeachment/conviction assured.
4. Riiiiight, the blackmail strategy has totally worked for Cuomo so far during this scandal and hasn't just caused things to get even worse. /s
Normally when you try to blackmail someone, you need to have some form of leverage over them. Before this all occurred, he had a ton of leverage. He was the popular governor of NY, the guy that no one could touch, and if you wanted to get anywhere in the state's politics, you had to talk to him. Now, he's the guy who Democrats and Republicans across the US are calling to resign including almost the entire NY delegation (which houses some of his staunchest allies). This man has absolutely no leverage, which has become apparent as absolutely no one has been taking his threats seriously and have just been leaking them to the press or talking about them outright, which only serves to damage Cuomo even more.
Perhaps there is a way for Cuomo to weasel his way out of this, but this isn't it.
Trump can take care of 1, he can go on TV and proclaim that Andrew Cuomo has been his buddy for a long time, a fighter up against the Democratic "cancel culture", and that he's on the right side now so Republicans should stand with him. This would be done in exchange for Cuomo pardoning Trump on NY state charges.
You're right on 2, this is a big weakness of this strategy, if Cuomo could stop legislation he could promise the Republicans to veto the coming Democratic NY gerrymander and get the national Republican Party on his side too.
On 3 and 4, if Cuomo gets the 20 Republican senators, he only needs 2 Democratic senators. Of course he wouldn't get them on merit. But NY is a machine politics state and I'm sure there are corpses and skeletons hidden all over the place. Illegal slush funds that lawmakers use to enrich themselves, ties with Jeffrey Epstein, that kind of thing. You and I don't know where they are, but Cuomo surely does, and with this info he could blackmail a few Democratic senators to vote to acquit. Mike Madigan ran IL for decades with this kind of manipulation.
