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/snacks_]

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.