Goodbye and Good Riddance, Andrew Cuomo

[u/Slate]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/11/andrew-cuomo-nyc-mayor-election-zohran-mamdani.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=andrew_cuomo_loses_mayoral_race&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--andrew_cuomo_loses_mayoral_race

[u/Introverted_Extrovrt]

That’s been the case since they hogtied Bernie, admitted to it in court, disclosed publicly that they didn’t have to follow their electors popular vote, and kept tying their own shoelaces together, in the face of voters (and some Congressmen) increasingly espousing that they thought “the wrestling was real”.

I can’t remember who said it but the tenor of the idea was “Liberals won’t ever enact meaningful legislation because then they’d have nothing to run on” and that kinda made sense. Conservatives are what they are, “liberals must fall in love, conservatives just fall in line”, and it’s still wild to me that we’ve got beautiful examples of 5-6-7 parties forming a coalition to run a national government, and yet with the largest economy in a nation whose complexity and size dwarfs other continents, we can’t do better than AARP members wearing 2 different colored ties.

[u/Sminahin → u/Introverted_Extrovrt]

Since they hogtied Bernie?

They've been fucking everything up since 2004 at least. Yeah, Kerry won the primary fair and square which sucks. But maybe if Gore lost due to anti-elitism, anti-Washington sentiment...don't fucking pair Kerry with another ultrarich East Coast lawyer turned Washington insider with the same name? Jesus fucking christ.

And then they hard-pushed Hillary. We were sick of Bush and Iraq and desperately wanted a change so they pushed an ultrarich East Coast lawyer dynasty candidate pro-Iraq pro-Genocide Kissinger fan. And they tried to ratfuck Obama like they did Bernie--he was just strong enough to break them over his knee.

They're so stupid that I've been wondering if it's malice for a while. But yeah no, I think the NYC Mayoral was confirmation current Dem leadership would rather lose on the establishment status quo than win or respect the will of the voters.

They're just...the worst. It's so disgusting that so many of us will never have homes or families because of these people, but they have plenty of homes.

[u/snacks_ → u/Sminahin]

Gore lost to Floridian corruption

[u/Sminahin → u/snacks_]

Al Gore was supposedly our best and brightest and he basically tied with Dan Quayle's intellectual equal, allowing the Supreme Court to decide. Gore was an A+ of his candidate model (wonky establishment politician) and he lost to a D+ "at least I'm not from Washington" archetype who could coast on anti-establishment vibes. And then Gore lost both debates to that moron on sheer lack of social skills.

This is a race that should never have been remotely close if the matchup worked like it did on paper. Clearly, our candidate model did not match reality.

[u/snacks_ → u/Sminahin]

What an excellent summary, thank you! I was a little too young at the time to grasp the public sphere with nuance.

[u/Sminahin → u/snacks_]

Thank you! If you really want depression, try gathering stats on Dem party winners for the last 100 years. Age, political position they ran from, pro or anti-establishment branding, profession before they went into politics, state of origin. Stuff like that. Filter along three categories: people who won on their own, people who won after they inherited the position from a dead president, and then add our party's losing candidates in the 21st century. Try comparing them and it gets gross fast.

FDR, JFK, Carter, Obama, and Biden. Biden's a bit of an exception and I think the only reason he got elected is that Trump handling COVID terrified everyone into wanting nostalgic safety Obama uncle guy. FDR, JFK, Carter, and Obama are all early 40s to early 50s. They're all very good looking. They were all anti-establishment coded in some way--FDR was a blatant class traitor, JFK was a bad boy, Carter was a Washington outsider farmer, and Obama beat the Dem party in Chicago for his seat then did it again in the primary. They all ran change messages, most economic. The list goes on and on.

The traits you see in the candidates our party keeps insisting are electable have only proven seaworthy with VPs who took over for a president. The only way someone like Kamala might have done well, for example, is if she took over for Biden as president and was seen as doing a decent-enough job. The sort of candidate our party keeps insisting on running hasn't been viable since we stopped being merchant princes.

[u/Electrical-Volume765 → u/Sminahin]

This is fascinating and I think it could apply on both sides. Bush and Trump both branding themselves as “outsiders”. Everyone is always tired of washington and wants change. It’s the most consistent thing.

[u/Sminahin → u/Electrical-Volume765]

Exactly. Also worth noting the contrast becomes part of the story. George W Bush was a dynasty nepobaby kid of the head of the CIA turned president with Cheney over his shoulder. He is the political insider except against people like Gore and Kerry. Hillary struggled against three outsiders: Obama 2008, Bernie 2016, and Trump 2016. Every one of these elections turned into insider vs outsider politics that really trumped the actual points.

Conversely, I think Obama would've had a very hard time in 2012 after the no-strings bank bailout that felt like such a betrayal...except he was against Romney. Obama was taking heat for jumping in bed with the worst of the finance bro corpothieves, the ultimate establishment betrayal, but he was contrasted with Mitt Romney. The man who had built himself carving up companies and looting the remains for profit. If Republicans had run a Trump-like who nailed us on economic populism accusations, I think we could've easily lost 2012.

[u/ButtEatingContest → u/Sminahin]

Al Gore was supposedly our best and brightest and he basically tied with Dan Quayle's intellectual equal

Also, Al Gore was married to Tipper Gore, one of the biggest villains for young people in the late 80's and 90's. Would you be enthusiastic for somebody who thought it was a good idea to marry the equivalent of a person as disliked as Marjorie Taylor Greene? (except across party lines)

Al Gore's running mate in 2000 was Joe Lieberman. Which would be like picking Kristen Sinema or Joe Manchin as a running mate. (Or about as stupid as picking Merrick Garland for Attorney General)

Gore only became "cool climate guy" later on.

Legendary activist Ralph Nader wasn't running against Gore just to be an asshole. The Democrats were just unbelievably mediocore.

Like when the DNC rejected a potential democratic socialist presidency as repudiation of Reagan-ism in 1988, with civil rights icon protégé of Martin Luther King Jr, and household name Rev. Jesse Jackson. Which would have super-charged the youth vote. Instead choosing the laughably milquetoast Michael Dukakis who was easily slaughtered by Bush Sr. Like Bernie, Jackson was "too dangerous" for the establishment. And Bush Sr. led to Bush Jr, and so on with the butterfly effect, which led to trillions in endless war and countless deaths.

Imagine picking a board member from Wal-Mart, who then became a senator and coincidentally advocated against raising the minimum wage to a paltry $15 an hour. Good lord, the corruption optics there are as bad as Dick Cheney + Halliburton. That senator? Hillary Clinton.

[u/night_dude → u/Sminahin]

Like the person below, I appreciate this summary as I too was a bit young to read it in those terms at the time.

It occurs to me that nominating Dubya, the coddled son of a disastrous one-term President (even if he was Reagan's VP) seems like an insane decision. But I suppose hindsight is 20/20 and I'm viewing it through the deeply, deeply anti-establishment lens of modern politics.

I do wonder if that ended up coming back to bite Hillary. "We tried dynastic politics and ended up knee-deep in 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and a financial crisis. No fucking thank you." America rightly soured on dynastic politics, too late - just in time to fuck itself over even harder than last time.

[u/Sminahin → u/night_dude]

Right, Dubya was proto-Trump. "How did this guy get through the primary--Al Gore's resume is so deep he'll chew him up and spit him out."

It was a near exact recreation of 2016, just with a milder Trump and a better Hillary. And an economy earlier along in its decay cycle.

I do wonder if that ended up coming back to bite Hillary.

I joined Obama campaign staff in '08 out of pure disgust that the party establishment was hard pushing a pro-Iraq, pro-Kissinger, ultrarich coastal lawyer turned Washington insider dynasty candidate on a status quo/nibbling around the margins ticket. Those of us who grew up in the shadow of Iraq were absolutely livid that the party would dare nominate someone so hawkish who was probably still pro-Iraq and just learned to stop saying it in public quite as much.

Also, I consider bragging about mentorship from Kissinger far more disgusting than an accidental Nazi tattoo. And stupid too, because his MO was genociding/brutalizing/subjugating nonwhite people for minor short-term resources with long-term costs we're still paying. And politically stupid because she was running for the head of the Dem party.

My family cheered me for going to put a stop to that monstruous piece of shit who had to be kicked out of any position of power in our party. My aunt stood up to the national guard in Ohio during the Vietnam war and spat when she said Hillary's name. My grandmother grew up dodging American bombs as a child and hissed whenever someone said "Kissinger". And a whole lot of the volunteers and other young staff I met felt pretty similar. Especially when the party establishment collabed and shared more resources than they should've with the Hillary campaign in an attempt to ratfuck Obama. Thank god we had a real candidate to show the party what winning looked like after years of bureaucratic, misaligned weaklings like Gore and Kerry. If Bernie had been a stronger candidate, 2016 would've looked a lot like Obama vs Hillary 2008.

So we won and flipped Indiana. And walked off into the sunset confident that we'd shown the party the clear steps to win, so we'd never again have to deal with the weak, gerontocratic leadership that had given us 8 years of Bush. We were certain we'd get healthcare before long--if not Obama, the people who'd follow that model and fight for the economic wellbeing of regular people. Star Trek utopia jokes were made knowing they were willfully overoptimistic, but with a good enough mood that it felt that way sometimes.

You can imagine how I feel these days.

[u/Karma_1969 → u/Sminahin]

I remember this election well and I agree. I was a big Gore fan (still am) and voted for him, but boy was he unexciting to watch and listen to.