Cancel Cuomo — Or Poverty?

I get it. For four, long years we had to put up with a president who openly bragged about sexually assaulting women, was credibly accused of raping a journalist in a New York City department store dressing room, routinely targeted women with misogynistic insults, paid for sex with a porn star, and was photographed partying with accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. We had a grotesque pig as our president. And he got away with all of his sex crimes (not to mention his criminal subversion of democracy). So millions of Americans are justifiably angry, including me.

I also get that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is a bully and liar and sleaze — especially with women over whom he has power. At least five women have now publicly accused him of making unwanted, creepily intimate conversation with them — and he allegedly kissed one on the cheek and hugged another uninvited. But, at least so far, Cuomo does not seem to be as depraved as Donald Trump. He has not been accused of groping women’s vaginas or pinning them against walls and violating them. Nonetheless, there is now a Democratic lynch party in New York that is pushing Cuomo to resign — including the top Democrat in the state Senate.

Look, I’m no fan of Andrew Cuomo. Or I briefly was when I thought his televised pandemic performances made him seem like the only Democrat tough enough and nationally prominent enough to beat Trump. (Who knew that when it came to New York nursing homes, his straight talk was crooked.) I agreed with the progressive attacks on Cuomo, that he was too tight with corporate interests, that he was too much a captive of his own ego. Still, Cuomo trounced activist-actress Cynthia Nixon — whom I supported — in the 2018 Democratic primary, gathering over 65% of the vote. He went on to take nearly 60% of the vote in the general election, including a lopsided percentage of women, to win a third term in office.

So when Cuomo says “I got elected by the people — not by politicians,” I’m with him — on democratic principle. Barring the credible accusation of a sex crime — and not just pervy flirtation (which would probably eliminate nearly all male politicians in America, and some female ones too) — Cuomo should be allowed to finish out the term for which he was massively elected. If he’s arrogant enough to run for a fourth term in Albany next year, let the people speak. In the meantime, #MeToo frenzy has already cost the Democrats too many effective leaders, including deposed Senator Al Franken, while Republicans continue to merrily evade any such punishment.

A final note. Today, progressives should be celebrating the weekend passage of the enormous relief bill — a milestone that liberal Senator Sherrod Brown called the “happiest day” of his Senate career. When President Biden puts his signature on it, the sweeping law will not only deliver immediate relief to struggling Americans, it will establish a minimum-income safety net under millions of poor families with children.

With even Republican-leaning Senator Joe Manchin now saying he’s willing to at least curtail the filibuster if his GOP colleagues use it to bottle up urgent legislation, it looks like Joe Biden might really have a chance to go down in history as the most successful liberal president since FDR.

But instead, the New York Times leads today with a screaming headline about Cuomo’s battle with fellow members of his party.

What are we to do with Democrats? Always ready to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.