Who Would Be Less Horrible As The Nominee (And President), Biden Or Cuomo?

In her exhausting Cuomo column yesterday, Maureen Dowd quoted a conversation she had with Bill Maher who said to her "I see Cuomo as the Democratic nominee this year. If we could switch Biden out for him, that’s the winner... He’s unlikable, which I really like." Yes, very unlikable, which normal people don't like, even if he and Dowd do. Dowd is aware that people dislike Cuomo. "Progressives still have problems with Cuomo’s stances on Medicaid and the criminal justice system," she wrote. "And some people thought that he waited too long to totally button up New York, although the governor maintains that his systematic rolling closure was designed to prevent panic in the streets... Often in the past, when people called Cuomo patriarchal, it was not meant as a compliment. It was a way to describe his maniacally controlling behavior, his dark zeal to muscle past people and obstacles to get his way. The Times’ Adam Nagourney dubbed him the 'human bulldozer,' and a former adviser once put it this way: 'The governor thinks he’s a hammer. So everyone looks like a nail.' But now, the darker the zeal, the better, if it secures you a mask or ventilator. Given the White House’s deathly delays and the president’s childish rants, America is yearning for a trustworthy parental figure-- and a hammer." No doubt Dowd and Maher are. But New York, for all his bluster, is still short 6,949 intensive care unit beds and 4,141 ventilators, and Cuomo has clumsily backed the narcissist into a corner where his psyche won't allow him to give New York the ventilators.

The Trump family is a model of bad nepotism-- noblesse oblige in reverse. Such is their reputation as scammers that congressional Democrats felt the need to put a provision in the coronavirus rescue bill to try to prevent Trump-and-Kushner Inc. from carving out a treat of their own.

Cuomo-style nepotism at least has better values. Donald Trump got his start with his father discriminating against black tenants in their housing complexes; Andrew Cuomo left his job as a political enforcer for his father, Mario Cuomo, also a three-term governor of New York, and created a national program to provide housing for the homeless.

At Wednesday’s briefing, he displayed a picture of Mario Cuomo, who died in 2015, amid all the graphs on infections.

“He’s not here anymore for you,” he said, but “He’s still here for me.”

He offered a quote from his dad about what government should be: “The idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another’s pain, sharing one another’s blessings-- reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race or sex or geography or political affiliation.”

The quote was obviously meant to draw an odious comparison with the Republican in the White House who seems immune to feeling others’ pain.

The two men go back. According to the Trump biographer Tim O’Brien, Fred Trump was a regular customer at Andrea Cuomo’s grocery store in Queens. Andrew and Donald knew each other as they rose in Gotham. They were never friends, but Donald Trump donated to Mario Cuomo’s campaigns and made a tape for Andrew’s bachelor party, warning him, “Whatever you do, Andrew, don’t ever, ever fool around.”

Both men have often had the twin designation of charming and ruthless. The president is pure id, and when the governor was his father’s consigliere, he was known as “Mario Cuomo’s id.” Over the years, both have been called manipulative, expedient, bullying, vindictive, arrogant wheeler-dealers. They have both been described as obsessed with their press, thin-skinned and quick to belittle or intimidate critics.

But, as Lis Smith, the Democratic strategist who rumbled in New York politics before becoming Mayor Pete’s Pygmalion, said, “Trump is selfishly ruthless for his own personal gain while Cuomo is more benevolently ruthless.”

She continued: “It also helps that Cuomo knows intimately how to bend the different levers of government to his will. It’s where you see having been at HUD, having been an attorney general of New York, having been a governor for 10 years-- all that pays off. Ruthlessness is good, if it’s for a good purpose. F.D.R. was ruthless.”

...Trump, who is always alert to great performances by people who look perfectly cast, is well aware of the potency of Cuomo’s briefings. He veers between acting like Cuomo is ungrateful and should “do more” and acting like they are working together very well, depending on how thankful the governor seems for the president’s efforts.

It was clear that Trump did not appreciate Cuomo pushing aggressively and publicly for the president to utilize the Defense Production Act so that New York could get 30,000 ventilators. On Thursday night Trump told Sean Hannity that he had “a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be. I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.” But then he added, “I’m getting along very well with Governor Cuomo.”

On Friday, the governor hit back. “Well, look, I don’t have a crystal ball,” he said. “Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion. But I don’t operate here on opinion. I operate on facts and on data and on numbers and on projections.” He implicitly mocked Trump’s tendency to rely on his feelings rather than data. “I hope some natural weather change happens overnight and kills the virus globally,” he said. “That’s what I hope. But that’s my hope. That’s my emotion. That’s my thought.”

Bizarrely, Trump tweeted Friday that the governor had simply misplaced the ventilators: “Thousand of Federal Government (delivered) Ventilators found in New York storage. N.Y. must distribute NOW!” To which Cuomo responded that the president was wrong and “grossly uninformed.”

The back-to-back daily press conferences of the governor and the president showcase some primal differences about how they see the role of government and the identity of the country.

With President Trump on a Darwinian tear, I ask Andrew Cuomo how this crisis will change the way people look at government and how it will affect the 2020 election.

He says that, in this era where personalities and celebrities rule politics, the pandemic “changes the lens on government and you’re going to now inquire about experience and capacity and your past performance, almost like the normal hiring process. We got to a place in government where credentials didn’t matter and performance didn’t matter.” This, he said, would never happen “if you were interviewing a lawyer or a doctor or a nanny.”

I ask him if all this has revived his dreams of a presidential run.

After a long pause, he answers: “No. I know presidential politics. I was there in the White House with Clinton. I was there with Gore. No, I’m at peace with who I am and what I’m doing.”

His friends say that he will be loyal to Joe Biden. But if Trump is re-elected, they speculate, Cuomo could jump in in 2024, following his 2022 fourth-term re-election in New York. Or if Biden is elected and steps down after one term, Cuomo might get in. But that would mean he’d be up against whichever woman Biden chooses as his veep.

“He’ll get criticized with the same B.S. about ‘ambition’ for going against ‘the woman candidate,’ much in the same way he did going against Carl McCall in New York, but so what?” said one Cuomo ally, referring to his unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2002. “It’s hardly a clean, wholesome game. And someday soon, don’t we really need to return to what leadership actually is, as opposed to symbolism?”

...Mario Cuomo was known as Hamlet on the Hudson. He analyzed his worthiness so much, he left the field to the privileged, pampered preppies who never analyzed their worthiness-- George H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle.

When Mario was doing a Socratic striptease about whether to challenge Bill Clinton for the presidency in 1991, one woman got so impatient with his dithering, she mailed him a needlepoint pillow with the message “Carpe Diem.”

Now Andrew Cuomo is trying to wrest the lifesaving materials he needs from another privileged, pampered guy in the White House who never worries about his worthiness.

But this Cuomo doesn’t need a pillow. Carpe diem is in his bones.

Remember, Cuomo, an odious corporate whore from head to toe, may be beloved by the Maureen Dowds and Bill Maher's of the world-- both multimillionaires-- but he has only won elections in counties where grotesquely corrupt political machines determine the outcomes. Most New York State counties reject him. Meanwhile, Team Biden is desperately-- if quietly-- trying to win over progressives and young voters who are committed to not vote for the lesser of two evils. Writing for Politico, Holly Otterbein and Laura Barrón-López reported that "Biden’s advisers have engaged in talks with a range of top progressive groups, including some that endorsed his chief rival, Bernie Sanders... The outreach to left-wing organizations and individuals-- representing causes from climate change and immigrant rights to gun control and mobilizing underserved black and brown communities-- is focused on young activists. Broadly speaking, they viewed Biden as one of the least-inspiring candidates in the sprawling Democratic primary field. It’s a delicate dance for both sides. For one, Sanders is still in the race. Plus, the progressives recognize that their time and leverage to influence Biden is limited since he’s all but wrapped up the nomination. Still, Biden needs to fix his enthusiasm deficit, which was partly masked by his wins this month, and it’s far from certain that antipathy toward President Donald Trump alone will do the job."

Biden's people are primarily talking to people who identify as Democrats first and progressives second, not to people who identify as progressives and justice the corrupt Democratic Party as a possible vehicle to achieve their goals. Actual progressives wouldn't consider voting for a corporate whore and racist pig like Status Quo Joe. But plenty of Democrats who lean leftish have very little problem with that. The Biden people are pursuing groups that aren't especially progressive like Indivisible and Planned Parenthood, which can be counted on to back anyone with a "D" next to his or her name. A group like Sunrise Movement might be more difficult for them.

The activists are seeking commitments from the Biden campaign on their issues, knowing that any headway is likely to be on the margins; Biden, for instance, will never come close to Sanders on policies like “Medicare for All.” It’s a distinct letdown for them after coming tantalizingly close to getting Sanders as the nominee. To win the nomination now, Sanders would need to win more than 60 percent of the remaining delegates.

“The dirty little secret is everyone’s talking to Biden’s campaign,” said Sean McElwee, co-founder of the liberal think tank Data for Progress. “There will be fights, but at the end of the day, progressives still hold votes in the Senate and increasingly Democratic voters stand behind our views. I expect we’ll see Biden embracing key planks of the ambitious agenda progressives have outlined on issues like climate and pharmaceutical policy.”

Biden’s team is treating the project like a minicampaign. It has formed an internal working group dedicated to outreach to progressives, which met this week, and is crafting a timeline of engagement over the next few weeks. Senior Biden advisers Symone Sanders and Cristóbal Alex, along with policy director Stef Feldman, are leading the effort.

...Several progressives who’ve spoken with the Biden campaign said they see room to mold Biden’s policies on gun control, climate change and immigration. They are watching whom the campaign brings on to craft Biden’s policy platforms, hoping to see personnel changes.

On March 11, the day after Biden bested Sanders in five out of six states, his campaign spoke to ex-aides to Jay Inslee and outside advisers to Warren, as well as staffers with Data for Progress about climate change policy. A week later, the former Inslee aides followed up with Biden's campaign.

The group shared a memo with Biden’s aides that recommended he adopt Inslee’s clean energy standards and proposal to end fossil fuel subsidies, among other climate-related ideas. Biden himself also spoke with Inslee this week, though the conversation focused on the coronavirus pandemic.

Progressives believe they have leverage because Biden has lost badly among young people to Sanders, and largely trailed among Latinos, too. They also argue that aggressive action on climate change action and Medicare for All poll well among Democrats.

None of the groups is threatening to sit out the election if Biden doesn’t embrace its positions. For instance, Justice Democrats, which made a name for itself backing primary left-wing challengers against more moderate Democratic incumbents-- including several with ideological profiles similar to Biden-- said in a statement it is “definitely going to support whoever the nominee is.”

But the discussions with the campaign could determine the degree to which they and their members go to bat for the likely nominee.

The Sunrise Movement will work to defeat Trump “no matter what,” said Evan Weber, national political director of the organization, by registering and turning out voters in key battleground states. But whether Sunrise does “broad anti-Trump campaigning” or “explicitly back[s] Vice President Joe Biden” if he becomes the nominee, Weber added, depends on what Biden’s campaign does to “demonstrate that they are taking the climate crisis seriously.”

Progressives across the board contend they can apply pressure on Biden to embrace progressive policies at the same time they help him campaign against Trump.

“If we're serious about changing what happens in the White House in 2020, it is all hands on deck,” added Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter. But Garza added that “we need to stop talking about Obama and we need to start talking about Joe Biden.”

Garza, who endorsed Warren, said Democrats, with the help of the Biden campaign, have to “start painting a picture” of what a country under Biden looks like. Biden’s team said it has yet to reach out to black activists such as Garza and Black Womxn For, an activist group inclusive of transgender and gender nonconforming people that backed Warren. The campaign wants to give them space after Warren's exit, a move that highlights the sensitive nature of the talks between his team and progressives.

Some groups that are particularly close to Sanders' campaign, such as Center for Popular Democracy and People's Action, also said Biden’s team had not reached out to them.

Alexis Confer, executive director of March For Our Lives, a group led by the Parkland school shooting survivors in Florida, said the Biden campaign has work to do to energize the Democratic base for the general election.

“There has to be an urgency in courting young voters and really making sure their voices are heard in all the planning,” Confer said, adding that March For Our Lives is eager to talk to Biden's campaign to help expand his gun control platform.

Those voters were excited about the possibility of a nominee with an unapologetically progressive agenda, favoring either Sanders or Warren. Instead, she said, as the primary looks to be coming to a close, “There is a lack of enthusiasm and inspiration right now.”

One sunny, always optimistic former elected official told me that that he thinks "it's really important that progressives who are negotiating with Biden seek to extract concessions around personnel determinations (including on the transition team). Concessions around policy alone are nearly impossible to enforce. We'd need to have people we really trust in such an administration in order to think there was a chance of good faith efforts to drive forward the implementation of policies that we care about that are at tension with Biden's baseline tendencies. Personnel promises are more discrete, enforceable, and structural. And in addition to promoting good folks, we also need to make sure that the administration is not stacked with the likes of Dimon, Bloomberg, and other corporatists." I'm far less sanguine.

In fact, there's nothing Biden could do-- short of getting into a time machine and re-doing his entire political career-- that would convince me to even vote for him, let alone contribute to his campaign or urge others to do so. Trump's the worst president in American history. Biden would likely be the second worst. I haven't given up on Bernie winning the nomination-- meaning, at this point, Biden self-destructing, something he's always a hair's breadth away from when he gets in front of a microphone-- or refuses to. If he does, though, Bernie will still have to fight the DNC's intention of putting in some monstrosity like Hillary or Cuomo.