Don't Rank Cuomo, and Other Less Important Thoughts

The Democratic primary for the NYC mayoral race is today. The front-runner has been former Governor Andrew Cuomo, but he's facing a stiff challenge from a surging Zohran Mamdani, who's aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America.

I don't live in New York, obviously. But I've been casually following the race, and I do have some thoughts.

1) Don't rank Cuomo. That's the mantra of nearly all the progressives in the race, and it is correct. It's not just that Cuomo is a sex pest (though, dayenu). He was also an awful governor who actively sabotaged Democratic prospects in New York in order to promote his own presidential ambitions -- and yet was so manifestly incompetent he ended up wrecking his presidential ambitions too! Personally mendacious, hostile to his own party, and piss-poor political instincts? No. Get this guy out of here. And honestly, "don't rank Cuomo" is, far and away, the most important thought.

2) David endorses Lander. Not that it matters, but if I had a vote in New York I'd probably rank Brad Lander first. I always liked him. And with ranked choice voting, I could do it without worrying that I was tossing my vote away and/or involuntarily supporting Cuomo.

3) The NYT's cowardly Cuomo quasi-endorsement is nauseating. The NYT recently said it would stop issuing endorsements in local races (why?). But that makes this editorial, where it twisted itself in knots to not-expressly-say it is endorsing Cuomo while effectively endorsing Cuomo because Mamdani is just too lefty and scary, the most spineless thing I've seen in opinion journalism since everything the Washington Post has done over the past 8 months.

4) I'd rank Mamdani. But... I think there is a lot to like about Mamdani. He's clearly better than Cuomo (see #1, above). And I don't think he's antisemitic. But people are allowed to not like his evasive defense of the phrase "globalize the intifada". His response to that question is a reasonable source of criticism, and he can take those lumps.

5) It's not cheating when they don't roll over. On that note, one of the single most annoying habits of the Bernie/DSA wing of the left is how they act as if it's cheating when more centrist candidates don't just roll over and let them win. "The DNC conspired to defeat Bernie Sanders and coronate Joe Biden" -- no it didn't. Biden ran a campaign and beat Sanders, fair and square. That's how democracy works. In any given race, I hope my preferred candidate or faction wins, but I don't expect the opponent to not try (see also: Democrats are responsible for MAGAism because Barack Obama inexcusably refused to just concede the 2012 race to Mitt Romney). We're already seeing similar moaning about how "the Democratic establishment" apparently moved heaven and earth to anoint Cuomo and defeat Mamdani. Again, I think Cuomo is scum, and there are absolutely things he's done in his campaign which aren't kosher. But yes, the left-wing of the Democratic Party is going to have to actually win races where their opponents show up -- it's not going to have things handed to them. Grow up. 

6) If Mamdani does win, he should get a chance to govern. That's the perquisite of winning, and he deserves a fair shot. And I'm still curious how DSA domestic policies will play out if implemented (though I still wish we had gotten a test-run a bit further from spotlight in Buffalo). That said, the fact that he won't have a perfectly pliant city council and agreeable municipal bureaucracy putting his policies on a glide path is not sabotage, it's city politics. Much like having to actually win an election against an opposition that's actively campaigning, one is not being sabotaged when one faces the same basic set of obstacles and frictions that are inherent features of local governance in a large city with diverse stakeholders

Building Treehouses with Cuomo

The big story today is that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo allegedly complained about campaigning on Sukkot by saying, referring to Orthodox Jews, "These people and their f***ing tree houses." The quote is anonymous and as yet uncorroborated; Cuomo denies having said it.

In response, Josh Blackman wants to revisit the question of whether Gov. Cuomo's pandemic restrictions, while facially neutral, should be seen as motivated by animus against (Orthodox) Jews. He clearly means this as a gotcha -- "Under TrumpLaw (which may have expired on January 20), this statement would be fair game to understand Cuomo's animus." Of course, under the view Blackman successfully pushed in Trump v. Hawaii -- the actual TrumpLaw -- this statement could not be used to infer animus even for legislative enactments that were explicitly characterized as targeting a given religious group. Hypocrisy cuts both ways. That said, the way the Court has been treating religious animus in the pandemic cases compared to Trump v. Hawaii suggests that TrumpLaw really was just TrumpLaw -- albeit not quite in the way Blackman means. 

But for my part, there is no gotcha: I am perfectly willing to say that, if the statement is accurate, it is absolutely valid evidence that can be used to demonstrate Cuomo has acted with discriminatory animus towards Jews. And I suspect one would be hard pressed to find liberal commentators who'd disagree on this. Certainly, deep and abiding loyalty to Cuomo isn't going to be giving anyone much pause on the principle of the matter.

Speaking of hypocrisy, although the quote is anonymous (and denied) Blackman says flatly at the start of his post that he's making an exception to his general belief that anonymous press accounts sharing negative stories about politicos should be viewed with skepticism. Instead, he comes right out and says that this skepticism extends to quotes about Republican politicians only. "I take far more seriously negative coverage of Democrats in an institution like the Times. The editors would not slip up on a quote like this." This is impressively brazen. For my part, I think major newspapers like the Times are generally professional and so generally can be given a fair amount of credence when they run anonymous quotes like this, no matter who the subject is (though of course that doesn't mean they'll always get everything right). But if one takes a dimmer view of the professionalism of the mainstream media, then I'll just say that if one thinks that folks of the Times' social milieu could not be suckered into running an undersourced quote that reflects badly on Andrew Cuomo because of their latent political sympathies, then one really doesn't understand where New York politics are right now. I'm not saying the Times would run a hit job on Cuomo. I am saying that, if they were the sort of institution prone to running hit jobs, Cuomo very much would be towards to the top of their list.

How to treat a very offensive but also anonymous-and-denied quote also relates to the final note in Blackman's post -- a swipe at the ADL. The ADL "awarded Cuomo the highest honor in June 2020. Yet, as of the close of business, neither ADL nor its President has said a word about Cuomo's remarks." To the extent that the ADL didn't race out with a comment right away, I suspect that is almost assuredly because, unlike Blackman, they are not going to take an unsourced anonymous quote that Cuomo denies as gospel sight unseen, at least not without talking with Cuomo and his office first.

From my vantage, the quote seems plausible -- Jewish "friends" notwithstanding, Cuomo seems like exactly the sort of asshole who'd say something like this and think it's okay because he has many Jewish friends. And as I said, I trust the Times' general professionalism more than Blackman does. But given the close relationship the ADL has with the governor's office in New York, I neither find it weird nor offensive that the ADL is deciding to its own due diligence before commenting. 

Finally, it's hard to read the ADL comment outside of the shadow of Jonathan Greenblatt very publicly calling for Tucker Carlson's firing from Fox for promoting the White Supremacist "Replacement Theory". I've seen some conservatives appallingly cite this as proof of the ADL's liberal bias as opposed to the ADL rightfully calling out an extreme case of White Nationalist thinking embedding itself in mainstream conservative institutions. Blackman concludes by saying that he "will have much more to say about ADL and anti-semitism in due course"; perhaps he will address this then. But I hope in doing so he recognizes that there's simply no comparison between the ADL waiting to verify an anonymous quote compared to calling out Tucker Carlson for openly promoting White Supremacy where everyone can see it on national television.

The Terrible Need for "Bad Cops" in Politics

There is one aspect of politics that might stress me out more than any other. It's the necessity of "bad cops".

By "bad cops", I mean hacks that make tendentious arguments that nonetheless serve to push the Overton Window in a desirable direction. I mean flamethrowers who make unreasonable demands out of their party which nonetheless provide countervailing pressure against pushes from one's political opponents. I mean primary challengers against okay-ish incumbents by novices who'd have no idea what they'd do with the car if they caught it, but who manage to put a little healthy fear in entrenched politicians.

I'll give an example: I think the New York gubernatorial race last cycle went about as well as possible. Andrew Cuomo is a talented politician, but his first two terms as governor were spent undermining progressive priorities in a way that really shouldn't be happening in as a blue a state as New York. Cynthia Nixon has no political experience and probably would not make a good governor, but by mounting a credible primary challenge from the left she put enough of a scare into Cuomo that he's been far, far better in his third term. So for me, the ideal outcome is exactly what happened: Nixon runs a credible campaign but loses. Scared Gov. Cuomo > Gov. Nixon > Complacent Gov. Cuomo.

But there isn't any real way to "support" a primary by a candidate who you don't want to win, you just want to be "credible". You can't vote for someone unless they get more than 40% of the vote. And sometimes these things backfire -- Jeremy Corbyn's initial nomination into the UK Labour leadership race, after all, was made by MPs who didn't really want him to win but thought his presence would generate a healthy "debate". Oops. The point is, these things are unstable. You never know when the hack arguments suddenly start being taken seriously as policy (or law) or when the flamethrowers will suddenly seize control of the ship.

Now to be clear, I'm not saying every controversy stemming from the wing to the center is "bad copping". For starters, the center can also "bad cop" towards the wings ("hippie-punching" is a good example).  More to the point, there are obviously perfectly good objections that can made to established practices (and, for that matter, perfectly good primary challenges against incumbents).

But certainly there are cases where we know what's going on is theater -- where the leadership really got the best deal that's feasible, but nonetheless it is beneficial in the long term for some people to yell "sell outs!" because it ends up improving the negotiating position the next time around.

And that's what drives me up the wall: it can and likely is simultaneously true that this sort of agitation is both objectively unreasonable (on occasion, conspiratorial) and that it is politically efficacious towards collective party goals. Even if you don't think that Pelosi is a sellout for not having impeached Trump within her first three months, it's probably useful for Democrats to have a loud and raucous contingent saying Pelosi is a sellout for not impeaching Trump in her first three months -- in spite, not because, of the fact that this is a clearly unreasonable demand. Again, it's healthy for Pelosi to have a little fear bit in her from her left flank. But it'd be supremely unhealthy for the dog to actually catch the car. The mainstream Republican Party certainly benefited from Tea Party extremism. Maybe they thought they were using it cynically, just as their bad cop. But it turned out, they couldn't actually control it, and the damage it's done to the country may well be irreparable.

Again, using the bad cops is deeply unstable and risky (as the Corbyn example shows as well). Whether it's a posture taken cynically or earnestly, fraying norms around factual argumentation and reasonable expectations about political behavior are not easily mended once their tactical value has been exhausted.

New York State Politics Quick Picks

New Yorkers go to the polls on Thursday, choosing primary candidates for state races (the federal primaries -- where, famously, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez knocked off Rep. Joe Crowley -- were held on a separate date).

I'm not a New Yorker, but I still will venture some predictions on a couple of races of note. To be clear, these are predictions, not endorsements -- I'm saying who I think will win, not who I'd like to win.

Governor's race (Cuomo vs. Nixon)

I've always been a "hey, all the Democratic candidates are basically fine, so don't sweat it if your guy loses the primary" sort of guy. That was true in the 2008 presidential primary, and it was true in the 2016 presidential primary. Many people think Cuomo has been gearing up for a 2020 run, and if he was somehow nominated .... boy, would that test my commitment to the principle (for the record: yes, if by some Bad Place horror-show we're faced with a Cuomo/Trump race in 2020, vote for Cuomo).

Cuomo is one of my least favorite prominent Democratic pols. He's heavy-handed, he's entirely happy to keep Albany's dysfunctional machine intact so long as he holds its reins, and he's worked to stymie progressive priorities throughout his tenure (his fingerprints are all over the repulsive IDC traitors who gave Republicans control over the State Senate -- more on them in a moment).

The good news is, I think Cuomo has been sufficiently damaged that his 2020 ambitions are dead in the water. The bad news is, I think he's going to win his primary this week. I'm not a huge fan of celebrity candidacies, and at times Cynthia Nixon has sounded more like a speak-and-spell of d'jour lefty talking points than an independent personality. Still, I have no doubt she'd make a competent governor, and given how wretched I find Cuomo that's more than enough to justify casting a ballot in her favor. Plus, some of those rote-repeated talking points are actually pretty good policy!

But Nixon has badly lagged in the polls, and her campaign has never gotten much traction upstate. Backers will point to other prominent polling "misses" recently, e.g., Andrew Gillum in Florida or Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts, where left-wing candidates have blown past expectations in Democratic primaries. But those races either have been (a) open races (Gillum) or (b) single-district elections in deep blue, urban turf (Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez). We haven't seen anti-establishment anger translate into a Democratic incumbent losing statewide yet, and (regrettably) I don't see that changing. Nixon got a late gift with a ill-conceived state party mailer tying her to antisemitism (when even Dov Hikind thinks you've gone too far....), which will only further inflame her base and emphasizes the really grimy nature of the New York Democratic establishment, but I don't think it will be enough.

New York State Senate

A couple of races here have gotten some national attention. The most important, in my eyes, are the challenges to eight former members of the Independent Democratic Conference, a group of breakaway Democrats who until recently caucused with Republicans and gave them control of the state senate (despite a nominal Democratic majority). It was dirty Albany politics at its worst, and in this Trumpist era Democratic primary voters are in no mood for collaborationists. I hope all of them go down, and hard.

Unfortunately, I've seen no polling in these races and the IDC members are scattered among very different districts all across the state. So it's hard to draw any general predictions about whether they'll win or lose. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that a few scalps will be claimed but that most are going to survive. In a sense, it's a shame that these races haven't gotten the attention of a certain other NY state senate race, since a sense of national momentum could've made all the difference. Alas.

Said "other" race, of course, is the ab-so-lutely wild contest where Julia Salazar, a working-class(?) Jewish(?) immigrant(?) democratic socialist (pretty sure on that, one at least for now) is challenging incumbent Martin Dilan. Every other day seems to bring a new revelation, each more nuts than the last (the most recent is that she's about to be outed as a sexual assault survivor which -- not cool, whoever's doing the outing).

Of course, with Salazar getting all the focus, I was left wondering what exactly was the deal with Dilan. He's not, to my surprise, IDC, which was my initial assumption for why he'd be the subject of such intense progressive vitriol. The line I've heard more recently is that Dilan is seen as too close to developers, though I haven't gotten much more details than that.

One might think that all of this negative press might kneecap Salazar's chances. But I think she's going to win, and going to do so handily. Rightly or wrongly, I think Salazar's backers think of this negative press as a smear campaign that targeting a non-establishment progressive, and so if anything it will make them more enthusiastic about her chances. And while I don't think an AOC or Pressley style insurgency can overcome incumbency advantages statewide in New York, the Brooklyn area that Salazar is running is another matter entirely. Plus, Dilan (again, for whatever reason) doesn't seem to be that popular in his district -- his last challenger got 41% against him, and 2018 is shaping up to be a much better year for candidates of Salazar's ilk.

Finally, there's one other New York State Senate race worthy of mention, also falling in the "technically not-IDC" category. That would be incumbent Simcha Felder's contest against challenger Blake Morris. Felder isn't IDC, but only because he caucuses with the Republican Party outright despite nominally running on a Democratic line. That turncoat status was enough for the New York Times to endorse Morris.

Felder represents a heavily Orthodox Jewish district in New York (including Boro Park), and has distinguished himself by fighting against state oversight of Yeshiva education (alongside an otherwise generally conservative, if unremarkable, voting record). Morris, a secular Jew, says he's counting on "secret" Orthodox Jewish opposition to Felder to ride to victory. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to see public signs that a challenger has backing in his community before I predict an upset. I think the Orthodox community will stick with Felder, and he will continue to be a massive thorn in the side of the Democratic caucus in Albany.

Short version:

Cuomo over Nixon

Salazar over Dilan

Felder over Morris

Over/under IDC candidates defeated: Two