After several weeks of national drama and playing the victim, it’s fairly clear that Andrew Cuomo will not throw in the towel.
Without a sense of irony, the lifelong politician and three-term New York governor said last week, “I was not elected by the politicians. I was elected by the people.”
He then added, “I am not part of the political club,” which is risible when you’ve literally been in politics your entire adult life and are the son of a three-term governor.
Perhaps Cuomo’s confidence emerges from a recent Siena College poll of more than 800 New Yorkers, where only 35% said he should resign now.
“He’s not going to listen to the music no matter how loud it plays in and around him,” Donna Brazile predicted. “He is going to follow his own instincts, which is to try to tough it out, because that’s the kind of person he is.”
Meanwhile, Cuomo’s COVID “czar” has been calling county officials to gauge their loyalty to the malignant narcissist. Basically Larry Schwartz said to pledge fealty or you shall not receive vaccines.
But the final straw never should have been the harassment allegations when a more serious scandal occurred the past year.
That nursing home fiasco — a mandate ordering nearly 10,000 COVID-19 patients into nursing homes without requiring a test, leading to needless deaths of over 15,000, and then a cover-up of the casualty total — should be one of the biggest stories in U.S. history. Instead it is overshadowed.
The brave Janice Dean, who’s become a hero in this matter, recently tweeted about calls for the governor to resign:
“I wish it were about the 15,000 nursing home deaths, the lies and the cover-up of the death toll. But he deserves to go, and be shamed, so I’m ok with the universe deciding it’s his disgusting behavior towards women.”
Inept policies from Democrat governors throughout the Midwest and Northeast also have been deadly during the pandemic, while Republican governors, trusting science and their citizens, largely succeeded.
“Andrew Cuomo doesn’t have a lot of friends, doesn’t have a lot of ingrained loyalty and affection,” Axios’ Jonathan Swan said Sunday. “He’s made a lot of enemies. And now, in his moment of need, he is finding himself very isolated.”
Every major Empire State player from Mayor Bill de Blasio and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer has called for Cuomo’s resignation.
Last week, 118 of the 213 members of the state senate and state assembly came out in favor of either his resignation or impeachment. But the cacophony of Democrat voices are mainly motivated by self-interest, not purity. Many of them enabled Cuomo, though few as badly as corporate media overlords who cheered on this megalomaniac.
President Joe Biden at first did not comment, perhaps because, at least on misconduct, the claims would doom the president, too. The vice president has been hypocritically silent, considering she’s long denied due process to political opponents.
When not answering questions on the immigration kerfuffle Wednesday on ABC, Biden said Cuomo should resign if allegations are confirmed.
As Mark Halperin responded in his daily newsletter, “The charges won’t be confirmed as true anytime soon. What Cuomo wants now is time to find a way out and to brandish public opinion polls showing enough support to survive. Biden’s answer allows for both; the presidential reply doesn’t put more pressure on Cuomo to quit — it puts on less.”
Unlike California, where recall petitions are permitted, New Yorkers can’t directly reclaim power from their governor; it has to be done through the political class. Good luck.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
