Cuomo 2016-bubble about to burst–already!
June 30, 2011, 4:20 pm
Posted by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
Headline (NYTimes): Cuomo will seek to lift ban on hyraulic fracturing: “The Cuomo administration is expected to lift what has been, in effect, a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, a controversial technology used to extract natural gas from shale, people briefed on the administration’s discussions said on Thursday.”
Headline (Politico): Andrew Cuomo hit by liberal backlash: “While the first-term Democrat became an instant national hero of the left and talk began about a potential 2016 presidential campaign, the liberal world is out to remind its voters that, other than on gay marriage, his record veers closer to Chris Christie than typical Democratic standard-bearers.”
I guess we can all hate him now. See? He’s a uniter! :-)
Fails the purity test. Poor guy.
Anyone who thinks Cuomo represents anything but the wealthiest interests is not paying attention.
While I celebrate the news of marriage equality in NY, we should realize that this only happened because the wealthy, especially the Houses of Finance, did not object -our society’s imprimatur. A New York gubernatorial candidate needs to raise at least $25 million to get the job; the office is for sale and the buyer is beholden to those who put him there.
I’m not one of those leftists who ignore identity politics and focus exclusively on class, however, considering how feminism stalled (IMO) after penetrating the ruling class but descending no further I worry that something similar could happen with gay rights.
I don’t know much about hydraulic fracturing but I suspect it’s not a ‘one issue’ spoiler on anyones’ agenda except a farmer in Western NY whose well water stinks.
Liberals forget history at their own peril: Only moderates who can command a broad coalition have ever gotten elected president, whether from the center-left or center-right.
This was true of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. It is also true of Barack Obama.
Even Ronald Reagan, the right’s hero and the left’s bete noir, moved to the middle once he got nominated because he knew that was the only way to beat Carter.
This reason is why FDR famously said to his more liberal supporters that if they wanted progressive change: “Make me do it!”
Many have speculated why Mario Cuomo did run for president especially in 1992 when the only competition was from a very flawed Arkansas governor. Maybe it was because he could count better than the rest of us? Maybe he understood the inherent obstacles for a candidate whose last name ends in a vowel.
And, maybe Mario Cuomo understood that his liberal positions would never play that well with an electorate that is held hostage by the maddening “moderates/independents” who prefer paddy-cake to politics.
If Andrew Cuomo keeps having the political luck and savvy that he displayed his first year in Albany, it will be hard for any liberals not to support him in 2016, just like liberals will get in line behind Obama next year.
Where else will they go?
Ed Gleason: “I don’t know much about hydraulic fracturing but I suspect it’s not a ‘one issue’ spoiler on anyone’s agenda except a farmer in Western NY whose well water stinks.”
New York farmers have steadily decreased over the years; many were dairy farmers, never as “capital efficient” as those in the Midwest and parts West, and they are gradually disappearing. There may be marginal farmers who have already benefited from signing leases and who hope for gas royalties. But I detect that it is the jobs people expect that foster support for fracking. It’s not clear that there are that many jobs, especially local jobs, and those who hope for quick dollars from fracking may rue the day when they have ruined their water supply, and created polluted land and streams/rivers from the fracking chemicals that are part and parcle of the process. Or to return to your observation: it will not only be currently stinking water, which I think you exaggerate, but the rutted roads from trucking out the gas, the noise, and the polluted land and fields that will be left behind.
One of the comments on the Times’s story asks this: if the NYC water shed area is to be protected, according to the story, why isn’t everyone worried about water quality? Good question. NYC, of course, has real political clout; that’s not true of the rest of New York State!
Brian is right about high finance as our society’s imprimatur. I first realized that gay marriage was a strong force when I saw the cover of the Economist about 8 years ago with figurines of a samesex couple and the header “Let Them Wed”. Money rules us more than any other force.
Joseph O’Leary: Are you saying that high finance bought same-sex marriage? That seems to contradict your statement that “gay marriage was a strong force.”
Margaret Steinfels said:
I think he said that he realized “that gay marriage was a strong force when [he] saw [a pro gay marriage] cover of the Economist”, an organ of high finance, i.e., lords of capital saw no objections.
Imagine if 8 years ago Commonweal had a “Let Them Wed” cover. Would it have conveyed the imminence of The Economist’s identical cover?
Jan 4, 1996 — 15 years ago! http://www.economist.com/node/2515389
I had not realized that gay marriage was about to make big conquests until I saw that editorial; back then it seemed a daring extreme typical of places in Scandinavia or somewhere. Who could have foreseen gay marriage in Spain and Argentina then?
High finance did not buy gay marriage but issued the decree that gay marriage was an idea whose time had come.
Here in Japan marriages of Japanese with foreigners are recognized (and civil partnerships have been solemnized at the British Embassy). It is said that this was in response to pressure from the business community.
I don’t know if anyone is still looking at this topic, but I had jokingly suggested elsewhere that Cuomo shouldn’t wait until 2016 to run for prez. Well, this guy has a twist on that suggestion: Obama should dump Biden and slot Cuomo as his running mate next year.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/that_the_ticket_5XPTo4YnZCqdLnKm3JXKBK
… then, this other guy attempts to debunk that suggestion: http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/216894/obama-cant-dump-biden
Jim P: I saw the Post piece–and laughed. A Republican predicting an Obama-Cuomo ticket is trying to free up the NY governship for another Republican and working to be sure that Obama loses. Off the bat, there are too many vowels in the line-up!
More seriously Cuomo’s baggage (living with someone without benefit of marriage and working for gay marriage) is not going to win any states between Pennsylvania and Utah. And as someone in the second column observed: if Obama needs Cuomo to win New York, he may as well not run. Just my two cents.
Jim P: I agree. I would like to see Obama dump Biden.
Obama doesn’t need Biden to assuage older Catholic voters in the Democratic coalition anymore – they’re a shrinking demographic anyway. Biden’s reportedly vaunted clout with the Capitol Hill crowd has never materialized (just reference the healthcare and economic debates – and all the Obama federal appointments now bottled up in the Senate).
Obama doesn’t need Biden’s presumed foreign policy expertise and military leadership either, especially after the raid on Abbottabad. Obama has definitively established his bona fides as a political and military leader.
Obama needs to reconnect with younger voters who swelled his majority last time and have to be won back and aroused. How about a woman – like another NYer name Sen. Gillibrand rather than Cuomo? Or Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida? Or Sec. Kathleen Sibelius who used to be Kansas governor?
Or a Latino like LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – Latinos are the fastest growing segment of the Democratic coalition, nationwide?
I like Cuomo, I’d support him. But he is going to have to prove himself worthy of national office through a presidential primary campaign, someday.
In any case, let’s remember, V.P. John Nance Garner, who served with Franklin Roosevelt, had it just about right: The office “is not worth a bucket of warm spit.”
Margaret: not that I know anything about NY politics, but I suppose that, if Gov. Cuomo were looking to plant the idea, the Post would probably not be his paper of choice?
I am not a regular reader of the Post, but it seems more likely to me that it is the Post that is trying to plant the idea (or its columnist–for nefarious reasons as I suggested above). But your assumption is correct, if the NYTimes started the rumor, Cuomo would probably perk ups his ears.
JJ has introduced another possibility: Biden will drop out (I don’t think Obama would dump him). Who would be a good VP candidate?
Justin Elliott of Slate’s “War Room” blog posted this to Twitter today: “Why is the NY Post flattering Cuomo with thin VP talk? background on the Dicker/Murdoch pro-Cuomo axis” — with a link to this story, his own, from back when the Post was all over Carl Paladino’s case. The gist is that Murdoch et al. kiss up to Cuomo because it’s in their interest to have a friend in the governor’s seat.
One man’s view: Ruppert Nurdoch is sleaze, his empire is sleaze and the NY Post is sleaze.