Why Is Cuomo still able to keep Office despite being the incarnation of corrupt politician? Who are his supporters/backers ?
The impeachment process against Cuomo has been underway for a while, and it has shifted into a higher gear with this report.
It shouldn't be that way. Families shouldn't have that much power. But they do. And it takes a fair bit to bring them down.
However, it is a fact that politics is a nasty business. We benefit when the people capable of doing it are the ones that we put in power. Otherwise, we will get gobbled up by the other factions and entities that do emplace that sort of person in their political institutions.
Personally I find it very interesting that these behaviors have allegedly been known by those in his working radius for many years, yet they are only coming to a head now after Cuomo's profile was elevated within the party and on the national stage during the scary slog of covid.
I am leery of the use of sexual indiscretions to hamstring political operators. If he did something illegal (to be clear, I am not saying he is innocent nor guilty), they should take it to court rather than to the New York Times.
I don't think that power itself is necessarily a corrupting force, but it is a magnet for those who are corrupted.
When one person agrees and the other disagrees it comes down to interpretation of the rules and then imposing those rules. It can become very despotic quite fast. And it’s not because the people are like that. The “system” makes them into that. In the case above, if the agreer sees the disagreers side this encourages other disagreers to flout whatever it was and things can devolve into anarchy. So you necessarily have to enforce some rules.
> All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.
That's not how the real world works. We're not in a comic book or self help course where if you want something badly enough, you'll get it.
Plenty of people want to be successful rappers (insert any other competitive profession). Most of them don't make it.
Now if you genuinely believe the deciding factor is 'willingness to go to any ends', you're simply empirically wrong. That's not how the real world functions and if it did, complex modern society would not be possible.
Democracy has less corruption than other systems due to separation of power, but it's foolish to think there isn't temptation to become corrupt when you think you can get away with something.
Until someone doesn't agree with a law. Then it will return to coercion.
The definition of corruption is willingness to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain.
Given a tribe is big enough, it'll have multiple sub-tribes in it. Now go back to paragraph one.
That's why politics is corrupt, as soon as a tribe is above a tiny size, people act dishonestly to further their sub-tribe's interests.
Governor positions aren’t placed via connections or corruption or family power. The citizens have to vote them in.
These most recent issues weren’t known prior to the last election cycle. Given these recent revelations I don’t see the voters going for him again, if he were to run at all.
They don't put "enforcing a strict moral code" above their direct personal preferences.
During the most recent NYC gubernatorial elections, eight parties had "automatic ballot access" due to getting enough votes on their party line from the last election. One of these eight is the "Women's Equality Party," created by Cuomo and his running mate Kathy Hochul in 2014, when Cuomo was already governor and running for re-election.
Those eight parties ended up nominating three candidates: four including the Democrats nominated Cuomo, three including the Republicans nominated Marc Molinaro, and the Greens nominated Howie Hawkins.
Two other parties without automatic ballot access were able to get onto the ballot - the Libertarians and the new "Serve America Movement" party. 15K signatures are required to qualify. The Libertarians got about 30K signatures and 95K votes; the SAM got about 40K signatures and 55K votes. There were also about 7K write-ins. Meanwhile, the two major nominees got millions of votes each.
It is technically true that an independent or write-in candidate could win. I don't think a write-in candidate has ever won state-wide office in New York. One write-in candidate has achieved federal office in recent years, but it was an extraordinarily special case that does not back up the general idea that write-in candidates are viable: incumbent Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski won re-election in 2010 after losing her primary.
I'd say she actually underscores that write-ins prevent some types of democratic backsliding in the US, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the unhealthy instincts of the core Republicans who tend to decide primaries in deeply Red states result in at least one more Murkowski in 2022.
New York is a pretty complex state. When you hear somebody blabbering about “dems” and “blue”, you know they are clueless. It’s a conservative democratic state with a bunch of internal tensions that drive a lot of different dynamics.
Another thing is that the competition is pretty lame. If he survives this scandal, he will win re-election.
The person elected governor before Cuomo (Eliot Spitzer) resigned due to a sex scandal. (prostitution in this case)
The investigation was done by the feds though.
The only governor we've had in the past 40 years who wasn't visibly corrupt was Eliot Spitzer—who allowed a sex scandal with no political/corruption elements (that I ever heard of) to push him out of office.
Cuomo was actually looking pretty good for a while, relatively speaking. He was still very much a NY politician, but he was getting some stuff done, and with Silver and Bruno no longer keeping a stranglehold over the state legislature, we actually had budgets coming in on time (for many years, it was guaranteed that the state budget would be months late, at best, due to the deliberate gridlock in Albany).
It is, of course, supremely unsurprising that Cuomo has been doing this sort of thing all along. It's exactly the sort of mid-20th-century "politician's perk" that anyone who's paying attention would absolutely expect him to be making sure he gets. Unfortunately, because he's built up a decent amount of political capital due to the aforementioned "getting stuff done", combined with the fact that it is something that far too many still consider "normal", and his almost fanatical stubbornness, it's also supremely unsurprising that he's not resigning. I expect to see a messy, drawn-out impeachment fight, at best.
At this point, we can just hope that we might get a replacement who's actually interesting in improving New York, rather than one who mostly cares about improving his own image and network. But I won't hold my breath.
The only way to do that is to credibly threaten impeachment. That’s the work that is being done.
Right now, a majority of the Assembly has come out in favor of an impeachment trial. We will see over the next few days if that threat is enough to push him out. I suspect it won’t be.
The executive can resign if they choose, but forcing a independently elected official out of office basically takes a lot of work and effort. He would need to be impeached by majority vote in the lower house, then convicted by a 2/3 vote in the upper house (plus, in an unusual NY quirk, the highest court, the Court of Appeals, joins the upper house as jurors) after a trial, where the governor has his own lawyers making his case for the defense, there are sworn witnesses and testimony, etc.
Impeachment has never removed a president. It has only ever removed one governor of New York. Cuomo has made enough enemies- and done enough heinous stuff- that he might lose, but it will be time consuming and painful, baring a resignation.
The US President is not directly elected by the people, even though the people by whom he is elected are not the legislature and he does not need to maintain their support.
Cuomo is skilled in playing "leader" on tv:
* the daily covid press briefings - these were especially powerful among Americans looking for some kind of steady leadership they could latch on to and feel safe and were especially amped up by the media (remember "Cuomo-sexual"?)
* in his response yesterday to AG's allegations, he showed multiple pics of him hugging and touching people he greeted, as a way of minimizing the pic that showed him touching one of his accuser's face
* multiple staged videos on tv of him assessing and riding the subways, cleaning the subways, attending gay pride parade, etc all to create a fake image of him as a "man of the people"
^^ that stuff still works on the over 55 demographics that watch CNN, so they still support him. IIRC, he had like ~50% approval rating like a couple weeks ago.
Likely being downvoted by folks who identify as liberal / democrat who still have misplaced faith that Cuomo is an effective leader.
That's how strong the media effect is.
And the elderly are a more active voter bloc.
The reason they stoped investigating the nursing home deaths is because titillating older women with a handsome elderly man is more likely to lead to political success than talking about how he killed older ladies.
The report lists many cases of grossly intrusive, invasive and inappropriate behavior; if even a single instance had some merit it would be more than enough to immediately and seriously call into question his ability to lead people effectively.
Sex assault is terrible, but marching people off to death is much worse, IMO.
I'm also interested in seeing Anderson Cooper trot out the accusers and interview them about Cuomo.
I, uh, don't recall either Trump or Mitch McConnel demanding that Kavanaugh withdraw his bid. Both Biden and Pelosi, however, have called for Cuomo's resignation.
It's strange how the Republican party seems to be unwilling to hold itself to a much lower standard than what they demand from Democrats.
He ended up taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court, who ruled that what he did was not legally bribery.
You really can't pin hypocrisy on the Democratic party here. You saw the same with Al Franken (where, in hindsight, they were probably too quick to judge).
As for "lots of clamoring for removal", things are moving in the right direction; why make a lot of noise if things are going well? Plus in recent years at least, the Democratic party generally has a history of usually doing the right thing with these kind of issues as far as I know. The Republican party on the other hand has lost the trust that they will just do the right thing, and events from the last several years don't really make that lack of trust all that unreasonable to be honest.
[1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al...
Why would anyone protest if Biden has already called for the resignation? "We are demanding that you do what you're already doing!" That would be silly.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_2020_presidential_ca...
It really is impossible to have any sort of sensible conversation if you're hell-bent on blaming the Democrats. They are calling for his resignation and working on his impeachment, and ya'll still outraged and bringing up all sorts of unrelated things.
So is that doesn't satisfy you, then what will?
If corruption didn't work for politicians, the “corrupt politician” image wouldn't be a thing.
But Cuomo is done, its just a matter of time. Unlike what has happened with the national GOP and Trump, NY Dems are done with Cuomo; his impeachment and removal are essentially certain even with his party hold majorities in both houses of the legislature, and it looks like there is a decent chance of him facing criminal charges as well, with DAs in multiple NY counties conducting investigations.
Politics is a weird thing, and to those who question situations like this really should watch that show. Aside than learning about the Constitution in school, you’ll learn more about real world politics from that show than you can imagine.
It’s been hours since the Attorney General’s report was was released. This is asking “why are people allowed to lie unassisted” picoseconds after a car crash.
Now that the AG has finished the report, it looks like a matter of time.
It might just be a question of him positioning an ally to take his seat, or maybe tying up a few loose ends.
Fortunately, it takes due process to “cancel” a holder of public office. Part of that involves verifying claims.
Historically officials have been impeached for such things as drunkenness and “intemperate speeches” (racist rants). If the legislature wanted to, he’d be gone in 30s flat.
I find it particularly dumb in this context. This isn’t about “cancelling” or legally prosecuting Cuomo, it’s about deciding whether or not he is fit to continue to wield executive authority on behalf of the people of New York. You can decide that someone isn’t worth “cancelling”, whatever the fuck that means, and still decide that they shouldn’t be the governor of your state.
Cuomo will be forced to either resign or be impeached.