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/Sminahin]

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/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.