Originally published at: Second aide accuses New York governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment | Boing Boing
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despite my frustration at democrats holding members of the party to a higher standard than republicans hold themselves to . . . let me rephrase
despite my frustration at democrats holding members of the party to any kind of standards unlike the republicans, i don’t feel nearly as much trepidation at wanting governor cuomo to resign as i did at the resignation of senator franken, mainly because cuomo has been much less effective and useful as governor than franken was as a senator. i still have hopes that at some future point there will be a reckoning which the democrats will pass and the republicans will not because of their standards but i have yet to see anything like it.
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A politician’s job performance should have zero bearing on whether we hold that person fully accountable for their actions.
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i agree. however, it does make it more frustrating when we ask the effective to step down than otherwise especially when republicans refuse to accept accountability.
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Sexual predators should be afforded no power, rewards, or considerations, regardless of what political cult they profess to serve.
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As a New Yorker, I strongly disagree, but as @Brainspore points out, it is immaterial to this situation. What makes this so frustrating is that, like a lot of New York’s elected officials, he was quite effective and initiated a multitude of programs across education, tourism, agriculture and infrastructure that have actually benefitted residents massively.
New York seems to be plagued with a certain type of self-righteous leadership that likes to hang itself on its own petard. Like, how do these assholes (Spitzer, Weiner, Cuomo, Schneiderman… and that’s just the past decade) think this will all pan out? In addition to the damage he brings to his victims, this leaves New Yorkers reeling, once again, not from ineffectual leadership, but base depravity and cheap egotism. This is how the regressives will win control of states like NY.
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Separate (but not necessarily completely unrelated to) the sexual harassment allegations, Cuomo has a long history of bullying and intimidation of his critics, including those on the liberal end of the spectrum who are just trying to report facts that Cuomo doesn’t find flattering. I think it’s all part and parcel with the type of person he is and has always been. What’s changing is that many people are now coming to the understanding that this kind of behavior just isn’t acceptable, even when it’s coming from “your guy.”
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Well… seams about right.
I had several conversations about Cuomo with folks/friends outside of NY earlier last year, at the height of his positive Covid press, who were so impressed with him, wishing he were running for Prez, etc. I told each and everyone one of them that no, he was a serious jerk and an a**hole. You can just hear it in how he talks to everyone like he is reprimanding a four year old, even if you haven’t heard the firsthand accounts of how he treats people. But those have been around for a while too. His arrogance is there for the world to see and always has been. I am not surprised at all by these revelations. I hope he does resign, and good riddance.
Re Franken - it has been glaringly obvious that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has not yet said anything meaningful about this when this is her signature issue. Is she more cautious now b/c of what happened with Franken (she has never admitted to mishandling it, but she may think that - who knows?), or is it insider politics and hypocrisy? I don’t know but something is up with that…
(And I agree 100% that his record is beside the point when it comes to this - but I am not so impressed by his record, unless you support New Dem / centrist policies that anger the right and the progressive left equally. Maybe you do, and that is fine of course but I don’t - Cuomo has kept a lot of good things from happening in NY and dragged his feet on others until he had no choice. Spitzer was much more of a loss on the substantive policy side - but to be clear, he was an a-hole hypocrite and needed to go.)
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Cuomo is also far more expendable than Franken was. Minnesota is an electoral free fire zone. You never know what kind of person the state will elect. New York is solid blue. If a candidate can appeal to the downstate suburbs, they can get elected. Even the Republicans it elects for statewide positions were of the “Social liberal”. I can see downstate Democrats looking at the opportunity to put a more progressive person in the Governor’s mansion.
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It is not…
A not insignificant number of their delegation is Republican. NYC is pretty blue and has an outside influence on state wide elections like Senate and governor.
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No state is 100% blue or red. But the “red sections” of the state make up only about 10% of its population. Its not just NYC that influences the state elections, its the suburban counties as well (Westchester, Nassau, Suffolk).
The burbs used to have a tendency to elect Republicans, but were pretty hostile to the “Social Conservative” variety. In the age of the Trump, where bigotry is the official defining platform of the GOP and purely fiscal conservatives are labeled “RINOs”, you aren’t going to see much support from those areas anymore. (Trump carried the suburban NY counties in 2016 and they dumped him in 2020).
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My point still stands. NY is not solid blue.
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True. But it is Blue enough that you won’t see a Trumpista type Republican elected there for Governor or Senator. Cuomo is expendable to New York Democrats.
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I live in a NY “swing county/district” - an Obama-Trump-Trump county, 1 1/2 hours from NYC. Def far from solid blue. That said, yes for the statewide offices Republicans tend to be the moderate sort (think Pataki). It has more of an impact on the State Legislature and state politics, and also the U.S. House - our current Congressperson was one of the key elections for Dems to win back the House in 2018, and also our State Senator to win back the State Senate (though she subsequently lost to a Republican). If NY were true blue the Dems would have a much nicer margin in the House than they do (and there are definitely Trumpy House members from NY).
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The other cities in the state as well. We have one of the starkest red/blue rural/urban divides in the country.
It’s been reliably blue for Senate and Presidential elections for quite some time. But it’s only since 2018 that the DNC controlled our state legislature, and a couple decades that the Governor’s race tilted that way by default.
Almost entirely down to concentration of the population in those cities, and shifts in suburbs the last couple of years.
Which are pretty fucking red. I live in Suffolk county. We’ve sent Lee Zeldin one of Trumps most vocal, rote supporters to the house over, and over and over. There’s a massive struggle just to find anyone the least bit plausible to challenge him every year, as the district is considered a lock for the GOP.
Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk) is also one of the most racially segregated sections of the country.
Even Staten Island, one of the five Boroughs itself, is deeply GOP. They sent a straight up Q nut to challenge DiBlasio last go round.
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The number of women accusing Cuomo of sexual harassment is now at three, if history is any guide it’s going to keep rising from there. Time to resign before you’re in even deeper, creep.
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