Cuomo could never have won the nomination in '84. He had then been governor in N.Y. for only one year. He first came to national attention during the democratic convention that year, with a great speech questioning Reagan's "shining city on a hill" metaphor.
That's right. Cuomo was the expected to run by a lot of people both in 1988 and in 1992 and he decided not to run in either.
I think he would have had a better result than Dukakis in 1988. Certainly he would not have kept silent after the attacks of Lee Atwater and company. Don't know if he could have defeated GHW Bush.. what do you think?
Who would he have chosen as his running mate?
I don't know if Cuomo would have "kept silent" after the attacks, part of the problem was that the Dukakis campaign never had time to figure out a strategy since the nomination battle continued for so long, with Jesse Jackson refusing to give up. Another part of the problem was that Dukakis didn't understand how to present himself in front of a national audience. He followed his own liberal guts, which obviously wasn't the right tactic. Someone said a liberal is someone capable of understanding everyone except those who disagree with him and if that's true, I'm not sure Cuomo would have fared better - he certainly adhered to the same liberal tradition as Dukakis. He would have done better in the debates though, I'm pretty sure. He was much more quick-witted than Dukakis.
