Democrats Ready To Sell Their Souls For Bargain Basement Price Of One Cuomo
A true low point
When Georgia’s former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, endorsed Kamala Harris for president, he most likely ended his political career. When he encouraged fellow conservatives and independents in the battleground state to reject Donald Trump and vote for Harris, he quite possibly put his own life at risk. Nonetheless, he believed that “doing the right thing will never be the wrong thing.”
Democrats praised Duncan for putting “country over party,” but barely a year later, a shocking number of Democrats have failed to follow his example. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 over sexual harassment allegations, is now running for mayor of New York. Last year, the Department of Justice determined that Cuomo had sexually harassed at least 13 women who worked for the state over the course of eight years. That should be a deal breaker for the same party that has rightly based much of its opposition to Trump on moral grounds. Unfortunately, that’s proven not the case.
Prominent Democrats are endorsing Cuomo: This includes former Governor David Paterson, former New York Assembly Member Keith Wright, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chairman of the Democratic Party of Puerto Rico Luis Dávila Pernas, Rep. Adriano Espailat, Rep. Ritchie Torres, Rep. Gregory Meeks, and state Sen. Jessica Ramos, whose own mayoral candidacy crashed and burned. Political analysts claim Ramos, who’d earlier questioned Cuomo’s “mental acuity,” is making the smart move for her own political advancement. Geoff Duncan could have easily found similar reasons to back Trump.
Rep. Jim Clyburn endorsed Cuomo on Friday, and he doesn’t even go here. He said, “The mayor of New York is uniquely positioned to play an important role in the future of the national Democratic Party.” Cuomo is a 67-year-old documented sex pest. That’s a pretty grim future for a party that has presented itself as feminist.
Former President Bill Clinton, often a grim reminder of the party’s past, endorsed Cuomo on Sunday.
New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called for Cuomo’s resignation in 2021, as well as former Sen. Al Franken’s in 2018. She hasn’t endorsed Cuomo (yet) but has passively promoted an unearned redemption arc.
“This is a country that believes in second chances,” Gillibrand shamelessly told NY1. “So it’s up to New York voters to decide if he should get a second chance to serve.”
When I interviewed Lindsey Boylan, the first woman who came forward with accusations against Cuomo, she called out her party for its moral cowardice.
“I think it’s a symptom of a broader failure in our party and in our politics across the country,” Boylan said. “… it pisses anyone off who’s paying attention because they say, ‘Oh my God, just this time [four years] ago, you told him to resign. And now you’re saying, let people decide. But you thought it was important enough to make a statement these number of years ago. And now you’re doing nothing.’” (Watch below.)
The Democrats who’ve backed Cuomo have their kit bag of excuses ready, and they all sound like the Republicans who surrendered their souls to Donald Trump: “Yes, Trump is bad, but Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris are worse somehow.”
Melanie Travis, founder and CEO of Andie swimwear, announced last week that she’s voting for Cuomo, despite what she calls his “terrible brand” — a banal description of someone the DOJ found engaged in “a pattern or practice of discrimination against female employees based on sex” and retaliated against at least four of the women he harassed.
“He’s not perfect,” Travis wrote, as if “not a sex predator” is an impossible bar to clear. “I have real concerns about his ethics, but he’s miles better than the alternative, Zohran Mamdani.”
New York state Rep. Zohran Mamdani is a Democratic socialist, which is normally a tough sell in New York City. Socialism doesn’t get you a classic six on the Upper West Side. That’s probably why when I lived in New York, the mayor was either a fascist or a billionaire. However, it’s a far easier reach for mainstream Democrats to vote for a Democratic socialist than it was for lifelong Republicans like Geoff Duncan to vote for Kamala Harris, a liberal from California. At least, it should be.
The New York Times, which had stopped endorsing local candidates, came out with an anti-endorsement of Mamdani, who the editorial board claims is “running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges.”
He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance. He favors rent freezes that could restrict housing supply and make it harder for younger New Yorkers and new arrivals to afford housing. He wants the government to operate grocery stores, as if customer service and retail sales were strengths of the public sector. He minimizes the importance of policing.
Without any apparent self-awareness, the Times goes on to minimize the importance of the charges against Cuomo, who is simply described as having “his own significant shortcomings,” like he’s a Marvel movie from the past year. Then the Times, which of course doesn’t give endorsements, proceeds to list all of Cuomo’s supposed achievements like a LinkedIn testimonial.
“Many New Yorkers are nonetheless planning to vote for Mr. Cuomo, partly because of his policy record as governor,” the Times says, not so subtly including a link to its past endorsement of Cuomo. The Times also minimizes the importance of Cuomo’s name recognition. The major media and elected Democrats are responsible for reminding voters that Cuomo is unfit, even if he were a great governor, and he wasn’t. His administration covered up Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes, providing inaccurate data to public health officials during a crisis. This is especially relevant because Cuomo claims he hid data out of fear of the Trump administration. Yet some Democrats think he’ll actually take the fight to Trump.
It’s appalling to see people who should know better attempt to compartmentalize Cuomo’s bad deeds. If you elect rapists like Trump and sexual abusers like Cuomo, you are knowingly electing someone who will abuse power. A corrupt centrist like Andrew Cuomo is objectively worse than an otherwise normal Democratic socialist like Zohran Mamdani. We can survive bad policy but not morally depraved leaders. Liz Cheney understands this but apparently not Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer.
I don’t agree with many of Mamdani’s policy positions, either, but he’s not a sex predator. Geoff Duncan, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger openly disagreed with most of Harris’s platform, but her clear “I am not Trump” position is what proved decisive in gaining their support. If a candidate’s morality and character truly matter, they must take precedence over any actual policy positions. Otherwise, you’re just using morality and character as a convenient cudgel against your political opponents.
What’s worse is that mainstream Democrats have so many options beyond Cuomo, but now they are hiding behind “Oh no, the socialist!” (Brad Lander is right there.)
In 2020, GOP leadership at least tried to oppose Marjorie Taylor Greene during the Republican primary. If Cuomo wins the primary with establishment support, it would reinforce the worst GOP narratives about the Democratic Party: Democrats cynically exploit identity and victimization for their own political ends without any genuine moral conviction. When centrist Democrats claimed they were appalled on behalf of Black people everywhere because of John Fetterman’s shotgun incident, was that just an attempt to frame supporting Conor Lamb as a moral imperative? Would Democrats have actually defended Brett Kavanaugh with weak statements about “second chances” if he were a liberal judge?
“People are really angry that their leaders seemingly … represent no values, have no courage, have no tenacity, and endurance to do the right thing,” Boylan told me. If Cuomo is kept out of the mayor’s mansion, it’ll be because of the courage of people like Boylan. We’ll never forget the cowardice and craven opportunism of the Democratic politicians who could’ve done the right thing but failed when it mattered most.
"He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance. He favors rent freezes that could restrict housing supply and make it harder for younger New Yorkers and new arrivals to afford housing. He wants the government to operate grocery stores, as if customer service and retail sales were strengths of the public sector. He minimizes the importance of policing."
I lived in NYC for 41 years and I'm 62. I just left because I can't afford it. NYC is unaffordable for the people who serve the wealthy, who do those with money think is going to care for their children, clean their homes? The people who cannot afford to live there do those jobs. I saw the writing on the wall and am so damn glad I will not HAVE to vote for Cuomo in the general after he wins the primary. It was the same with Adams, didn't like him at all, still had to vote for him over the insane Republican. NYC is going to maintain its tradition of electing the worst mayors possible.
Judas got 30 pieces of silver for selling his soul. What will Dems get for selling theirs? It's heartbreaking that so many elected and formerly elected Dems are failing us as a nation right now.