CUO MO NO MO

Few people in this country have had more chances to screw things up more royally than Andrew Cuomo. He began His career as campaign manager for his father. He was the Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Community Planning and Development from 1993 to 1997. In 1997 he became the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

It was Cuomo who facilitated the Subprime Mortgage fiasco that came perilously close to destroying the U.S. economy. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Give mortgages to people who didn’t have good credit and hadn’t been able to save up for a down payment. What could possibly go wrong. It did allow a lot of people get mortgages to buy homes they couldn’t afford. But who cared, because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were there to guarantee a lot of those loans. But it turned out that bad loans are bad loans  Ultimately a lot of people, particularly minorities, who got those great loans ended up losing their homes. In the meantime, Investment Bankers and Insurance companies joined the parade. When those homeowners eventually defaulted, the mortgage-based securities market collapsed with them.

There have been numerous scandals, at every office he has held. He publicly renewed an executive order signed by Eliot Spitzer that prevented the Governor of New York from receiving donations from gubernatorial appointment. Secretly he changed the rules. There are reports that 24 of his appointees donated $890,000 to his campaign as well as another $1.3 million from spouses etc. Cuomo admitted his error and graciously returned $2,500 of this money. He used money from Hurricane Sandy to promote New York and its great governor. The Moreland Commission, a commission he established to root out corruption in politics, was disbanded when they started, gasp, looking at him. There have, of course, been the usual allegations of sexual harassment.

But none of this seemed to even slow him down. The Democratic Party was desperate to find someone, anyone, who looked like a leader. During the COVID 19 disaster, Cuomo even won an Emmy for his press conferences, even though New York arguably handled this worse than any other state.  He was like the Democratic version of Donald Trump, only without any actual accomplishments and a glaring lack of a soul. But none of this mattered, because the MSM loved him and could see no evil.

That all changed recently when one of his top aids admitted withholding Nursing Home death data from the DOJ and the New York Legislatures, because they thought it would be politically embarrassing. Cuomo failed to recognize that this was really bad, so he doubled down on stupidity by holding press conferences that just exposed his incredible ability to lie with a straight face and pretend double talk is a substitute for an honest discussion. Even worse, the only error he recognized was the failure to silence his critics.  It soon became impossible to ignore the reality of Andrew Cuomo.

He is now facing a bi-partisan push to impeach him. DeBlasio, easily the worst Mayor in the history of New York, is now slamming Cuomo. Things are so bad CNN won’t risk any more episodes of the Chris and Andrew show where the Cuomo brothers put on a nightly comedy routine.

It is not clear that Cuomo will survive this one. The problem is that in addition to the corruption and arrogance  he clearly is a world-class jerk in real life. Once people sensed the loss of power, they came out of the woodwork to trash him. It seems like everyone has an Andrew Cuomo story, none of them good. Soon Cuomo is going to look like the loneliest man in politics.

In fairness to Cuomo, he is probably no worse than a lot of other people. But everyone is angry because of COVID 19. They are angry at the lockdowns; they are angry at all the controls. They are tired of being afraid. Our schools are closed, everyone is wearing a mask and people are still dying. And Donald Trump is gone so blaming everything on him is no longer an option. But wait, there’s Andrew Cuomo with the same arrogant New York persona that people hated about Donald Trump. He is the Democratic version of Donald Trump, just without the baggage of actual accomplishments. Wait, he did actually kill a lot of senior citizens, but as he said: “so they died, who cares?” Obviously, not Andrew Cuomo.

In any national election, the Governor of New York, the Governor of California, and the Mayor of New York are all considered potential candidates for the Presidency. That is because these are the type of executive positions that teach one how to govern effectively. Look at the background of our Presidents, starting with Eisenhower:

Eisenhower – General

Kennedy – Senator

Johnson – VP and Senate Majority Leader

Nixon – VP

Ford – Congressman (not elected)

Carter – Governor

Reagan – Governor

Bush – Director of the CIA

Clinton – Governor

Bush – Governor

Obama – Ran shoeshine booth at O’Hare International

Trump – Business Tycoon

Biden – VP – Senator

 

Normally, if one political party had all these positions, the party would be considered very likely to elect the next President. But today those three positions are held by Andrew Cuomo, Gavin Newsom, and Bill DeBlasio, and all of them are stinking up the job. None of them have any realistic potential to be a candidate for President of the United States. What makes this worse, is that the last Presidential election proved that the DNC has no bench. If the best you can do is Joe Biden, then you’ve got nothing.

So, as you watch Cuomo deteriorate on his way out of office at a speed no one would have predicted just a couple of weeks ago, keep this in mind. This was the last best hope for the DNC. After Cuo Mo is No mo, so is the DNC.

TDM