How Much Longer for Cuomo?

This feels like resignation territory.

Via the NYT: Cuomo Accused of Unwanted Advance at a Wedding: ‘Can I Kiss You?’

The governor was working the room after toasting the newlyweds, and when he came upon Ms. Ruch, now 33, she thanked him for his kind words about her friends. But what happened next instantly unsettled her: Mr. Cuomo put his hand on Ms. Ruch’s bare lower back, she said in an interview on Monday.

When she removed his hand with her own, Ms. Ruch recalled, the governor remarked that she seemed “aggressive” and placed his hands on her cheeks. He asked if he could kiss her, loudly enough for a friend standing nearby to hear. Ms. Ruch was bewildered by the entreaty, she said, and pulled away as the governor drew closer.

“I was so confused and shocked and embarrassed,” said Ms. Ruch, whose recollection was corroborated by the friend, contemporaneous text messages and photographs from the event.

Indeed, in regards to the photo:

That photo is worth a 1,000 words, at a minimum.

This is the third allegation of this type of behavior to emerge in recent weeks (and one suspects that more will come).

Given his problems with Covid cases and nursing homes in New York in addition to all of this, one does wonder if resignation pressures won’t start, and soon.

His current term expires in 2022.

This is, as they say, developing.

FILED UNDER: US Politics, , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. CSK says:

    Bill De Blasio has suggested that Cuomo “no longer be in public service,” and that was earlier today before the incident SLT detailed above surfaced.

    He also told a female reporter that he wanted to watch her eat a whole sausage in his presence.

  2. There is now a fourth allegation I’ll post a link in the morning

    7
  3. Andy says:

    @Doug Mataconis:

    Hi Doug, it’s great to see you back!

    4
  4. Michael Reynolds says:

    I have a suspicion he’ll survive.

    5
  5. Gustopher says:

    He may stubbornly hang on, but he won’t run for re-election.

    I expect he will be gone in a matter of weeks though. He’s always been a bully, and made a lot of enemies who would gladly knife him.

    Add to the lying about covid deaths that NY is lagging the region in vaccination distribution, and that’s going to be a new pressure point if his administration doesn’t turn that around.

    2
  6. MarkedMan says:

    My views on these incidents are colored by the fact that I never liked him and felt he was unethical and probably morally, if not financially, corrupt for as long as he was in the public eye. As much as I liked and admired his father I disliked Andrew.

    2
  7. James Joyner says:

    Bill Clinton taught us and Matt Yglesias reinforced for us that “The Most Important Rule Of Surviving A Political Sex Scandal Is: Don’t Resign!” Virginia’s governor and lieutenant governor both survived recent scandals that way. Al Franken would still be in the Senate had he refused to go.

    12
  8. Kathy says:

    If he switched parties and kissed orange ass, he’d be canonized by right-wing media 15 seconds later.

    6
  9. steve says:

    He needs to check into a rehab center for abusers after a mea culpa. If he does that and then sticks with hookers for the next 2 years he can probably make it to the next election.

    Steve

    2
  10. @James Joyner: You may be correct. I just wonder how the confluence of the sexual harassment charges plus the Covid stuff plays out.

    1
  11. Kylopod says:

    @James Joyner: I think it also brings up a point that’s been on my mind in the past few days as I’ve been reading liberal forums, where there’s a fair amount of whining about double standards–you’ve got Trump (and more recently, Madison Cawthorn) with literally dozens of allegations including rape, and meanwhile Cuomo is being thrown to the wolves over much less. But we need to realize the double standard in this case is mostly internal; it’s basically a choice by Dems to hold their public officials to a higher standard than Repubs do to theirs. Dems could choose to be as shameless as Repubs if they wanted, just call all the women liars and refuse to do anything further. (And as you mention, a politician usually has the option of resisting pressure to resign even from within his own party.) I think it’s reasonable to criticize Dems for going too far in the other direction, especially when it’s done hastily as in the Franken affair. But Dems are simply not going to turn a blind eye to this kind of wrongdoing anymore, and as long as Republicans do, there will be a double standard between the parties. It’s not a “But her emails” situation. It’s a natural consequence of our own gatekeeping.

    11
  12. Kylopod says:

    @Kathy:

    If he switched parties and kissed orange ass, he’d be canonized by right-wing media 15 seconds later.

    I remember during the Roy Moore fiasco, there were Republicans arguing that the allegations didn’t matter because they happened when Moore was a Democrat.

    4
  13. MarkedMan says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: The fact that this creepy old man is on the prowl for women younger than his daughter is disgusting, but not really anyone’s business. If he was simply making overtures to women in clubs and accepting rejection it would be pathetic, but still just his personal embarrassment. The problem is that he is doing it with young women that he has power over. How can anyone, especially a Democratic in NY State, not realize it was going to blow up in his face? It is Anthony Weiner-level stupidity/self destruction. But it is also an apt illustration of Cuomo’s signature problem his whole life: a firm belief that the rules don’t apply to him, that as one of the powerful in a powerful state, everything can be fixed by the right people.

    If I still lived in NY State I would have had a helluva time pulling the lever for him, despite the racist clowns the Republicans have been running. His handling of COVID (not just the nursing homes but the showboating and arbitrary, ego driven decision making), his gutting oversight panels and his shady deals with both Dems and Repubs in the State House and Senate, and his juvenile and damaging slap fight with de Blasio (another clown) all render him unfit for office in my eyes.

    5
  14. DrDaveT says:

    @Kylopod:

    But we need to realize the double standard in this case is mostly internal; it’s basically a choice by Dems to hold their public officials to a higher standard than Repubs do to theirs.

    It is also, unfortunately, that there is not a critical mass of people within the Republican base who really object to sexual harassment. Certainly not viscerally, the way they object to (say) taxes or immigrants.

    6
  15. @MarkedMan: The reason I think the wedding story matters is that it lends substantial credence to the workplace allegations. (And photos always create a different level of acceptance of allegations).

    2
  16. Kylopod says:

    I’m old enough to remember when, after the Tara Reade story, some Dems were arguing that Biden should be replaced on the ticket by Cuomo. Talk about statements that haven’t aged well.

    11
  17. MarkedMan says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: I agree. Once the workplace issues are on the table, non-workplace issues speak to a pattern of behavior rather than an isolated issue.

  18. CSK says:

    @MarkedMan:
    Again, it’s the stupidity of arrogance, and, in this case, power. Cuomo probably assumed he could get away with this kind of crap.

    1
  19. MarkedMan says:

    @CSK:

    Cuomo probably assumed he could get away with this kind of crap

    Exactly. Although I imagine he didn’t just assume. I think he’s actually gotten away with an awful lot his whole life.

    2
  20. Kathy says:

    @Kylopod:

    So one time Kaiser Frederick the Great visited a prison. At once he was surrounded by inmates pleading for clemency, every last one alleging they were innocent.

    Fred noted one inmate off to the side, just watching. He called him over and asked him what he was convicted of.

    “Theft and assault, your majesty.”

    “I see,” Fred said. “And are you guilty?”

    “Yes, your majesty. I did what I was convicted of and deserve to be incarcerated.”

    “Warden!” the Kaiser says, “release this man at once. I will not have him corrupt all these wholesome, innocent subjects in my prison.”

    9
  21. CSK says:

    @MarkedMan:
    Indeed. He’s 63 years old, which means that he’s been doing it for 40-45 years, back to a time when women were supposed to put up with this kind of behavior, or excuse it as just boys being boys.
    But even back then, most men didn’t assume they could maul women with impunity any more than they do now. It’s become behavior that we call out now instead of justifying it or calling it out.

    1
  22. James Joyner says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: Oh, I definitely think he should go. But if he doesn’t resign, he could well survive this. I don’t think he gets re-elected or goes on to higher office. But I think that was true just because of his awful handling of COVID, which rivals Trump’s.

    1
  23. CSK says:

    @CSK:
    Replace “calling it out” at the end of my final sentence with “excusing it.”

    Obviously I haven’t consumed sufficient coffee this morning.

  24. @James Joyner: That outcome would not surprise me.

  25. Sleeping Dog says:

    He’ll survive and won’t seek reelection. Michelle Goldberg has a good take this AM in the Times

  26. gVOR08 says:

    @Kylopod: Years ago an evening tennis partner whined that liberals would rally behind Blagoyevich and get him off, specifically that MSNBC would defend him. I got home in time to catch Keith Olbermann cut Blago a new one and demand he resign yesterday at the latest.

    And yet every time one of these situations comes up, I see GOPs saying Ds will close ranks and save the malefactor, not like moral conservatives. The ability to disbelieve their lying eyes is truly impressive.

    5
  27. Kylopod says:

    @gVOR08: I hasten to add that Blago was almost unanimously (except for one vote) impeached and removed by the Democratic legislature. Trump later commuted Blago’s sentence.

    2
  28. CSK says:

    @gVOR08: @Kylopod:
    Blagojevich was apparently a contestant on The Apprentice back in 2010. And before that, Trump donated to Blagojevich’s 2003 and 2007 campaigns. Trump’s hotel and casino made a donation in 2007.

    3
  29. Gustopher says:

    @James Joyner:

    But if he doesn’t resign, he could well survive this. I don’t think he gets re-elected or goes on to higher office.

    I wouldn’t really call that surviving, not for a politician.

    But I think that was true just because of his awful handling of COVID, which rivals Trump’s.

    The plan was to get covid patients out of hospitals to make room for more covid patients, because overwhelming the hospitals was going to lead to a lot of deaths (remember “flatten the curve”). IIRC, this was actually the federal guidance.

    It was a bad idea, to say the least. But we also had little experience with covid. (The coverup is another matter)

    The slap fight with de Blasio was over de Blasio not wanting to shut down NYC long enough to blunt the rise of covid. Cuomo was right there, and de Blasio was a dangerous clown.

    There are lots of other details, but the general picture is Cuomo’s handling of covid has been a mixed bag, attempting to handle it seriously while being the first to deal with a large spike so with less knowledge.

    Compare that to Donald Trump pretending the virus doesn’t exist, or that it’s going to magically go away, or that we should all be taking some random quack cure, or that no one should ever mask up…

    No, Cuomo’s handling does not rival Trump’s. I’m not saying Cuomo did a good job, but orders of magnitude better than deliberately undermining the recommendations of the medical professionals. We would have half the deaths if Trump handled it only as poorly as Cuomo.

    WA Governor Inslee has done a far better job than Cuomo, but it went mostly unnoticed because there wasn’t dramatic footage of bodies being stacked in refrigerator trucks or buried in parks… because he did a better job.

    10
  30. Michael Reynolds says:

    @James Joyner:
    That’s my best guess as well. I have a hard time imagining him resigning, but it’s hard to see a future for him beyond his current term. Yet it’s not impossible. If Franken had not resigned I think he could have been re-elected, or ended up in a Democratic cabinet, and we’d be a better country for it.

    1
  31. Gustopher says:

    @Michael Reynolds: Why do you love Franken so much? Why are you so hung up on him?

    If Franken hadn’t resigned and been re-elected (big if on that second part), we would be a country with Franken in the Senate rather than Smith, which would be not particularly better or worse country on any metric other than number of Frankens in the Senate.

    (And there is no way Biden was going to nominate someone known to be handsy to anything, both because of his own reputation as a sniffer/toucher/human-golden-retriever and because he takes sexual harassment very seriously on his own)

    2
  32. Joe says:

    @Gustopher:

    WA Governor Inslee has done a far better job than Cuomo, but it went mostly unnoticed because there wasn’t dramatic footage of bodies being stacked in refrigerator trucks or buried in parks… because he did a better job.

    I sometimes muse about an alternate history for COVID where the federal government jumped on it early and hard and actually contained it through aggressive shut downs and masking that only required 30-60 or even 90 days before things generally re-opened. I can just imagine all the howling about the pretend crisis – because it was actually avoided.

  33. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Gustopher:
    Do I need some special reason not to want to lose talented, motivated, idealistic politicians?

    5
  34. Kathy says:

    @Joe:

    I think your first parallel timeline is called New Zealand, or maybe Taiwan or South Korea.

    The second part is called Y2K. Lots 0f people complained that nothing happened on January 1st 2000.

  35. Thomm says:

    @Gustopher: Seriously? We have who now in the senate? A milquetoast unknown rather than someone who was well known and also known for being effective. I’m sure that you would be making the same “replacing a republican with another” argument if, say, tom cotton or ted cruz was replaced by a federal newcomer. That is one reason that it irks some, another is that he was sacrificed for gallibrand’s failed (badly I might add) nomination run. Notice how she was mum on other allegations that came out around that time period about republicans both in house and senate. And to forestall any “other chamber” nonsense, if you are an activist and truly care about an issue, then such artificial boundaries wouldn’t keep you quiet. Witness AOC constantly snacking ted cruz around.

    2
  36. inhumans99 says:

    @Joe:

    Here’s the thing, imagine if you will a list of 2,000 items and next to them is a box to check-off that says Trump Got It Right and Trump Got It Wrong. On that list is Response To Covid 19, and imagine if all but one box was checked Got It Wrong and the one lonely box marked Got It Right was Response To Covid 19, well…that would be a helluva an item to have gotten right. We would now be talking about President Trump’s recovery efforts to get the economy back on track, and all that jazz.

    Of course, if Trump got the arguably most important item on the list right, the Covid response, we would also be looking at an alternate reality where he did not release the hounds to take down Republican politicians at the Capitol on January 06th. An individual who got the Covid response correct would not be as venal a man as Trump.

    My big concern is that Trump has unleashed forces that will do physical harm (or worse) to a politician over the next 2-4 years, but you know what is really odd is that I am more worried for the safety of GOP politicians over that of Democratic ones (still worried for Dems, but moreso for Republican politicians).

    Trump expected Dems to loathe him and of course made sure to try to punish “Blue” states, but I suspect he is seething with a special kind of rage that Republican politicians in states like GA did not work with him to guarantee a second term.

    For the most part, we all just assumed that Republican politicians would fall in line with Trump’s desires and it makes me nervous that so many of the Republican’s that Trump expected to be in his pocket showed a streak of independence. Trump does not forget slights against him and as we all saw what happened when Obama bruised his ego at what was essentially a roast, Trump will spend the remainder of his life trying to go after anyone who dared to insult him.

    Granted, if the Republicans had not exhibited a streak of independence we would not be talking about President Biden, but still, if you have an R in front of your name you took a risk going against Trump and I suspect a lot of Private Security firms received a bump in business after the Biden was officially sworn in as our current President.

    Anyway, to drag this long-ass post back on subject, I confess that in the early days it seemed like Cuomo was the anti-Trump, happy to give daily pressers, made the right moves shutting NY down, and just getting line with the experts advice that we might be able to flatten the curve if citizens were forced to endure some SIP hardships for 60-90 days. I started to become aware of his flaws as the pandemic dragged on but for brief moment he was admired from folks across the country.

    I still think James has it right, he can bull his way through this and not have to resign, but running again for office in 2022 might be off the table for good.

  37. Gustopher says:

    @Thomm:

    A milquetoast unknown rather than someone who was well known and also known for being effective.

    And what, exactly did Franken do that was so wonderful? He was good with a quip, but beyond that?

    he was sacrificed for gallibrand’s failed (badly I might add) nomination run. Notice how she was mum on other allegations that came out around that time period about republicans both in house and senate.

    Was she? I don’t recall that. And what about the rest of the Democratic Caucus that was pressuring Franken to resign?

    The Gallibrand argument is often brought up by people who, frankly, are pretty misogynistic themselves. I don’t think you are (or Micheal is when he goes off on Gallibrand), but it makes me wonder whether you are reading those who are, and getting some of their intense focus on Gallibrand.

    But, let’s assume that Gallibrand is, in fact, evil incarnate and a lackluster politician all at once. It doesn’t speak well to Franken’s abilities that a lackluster politician was able to organize the entire Democratic Caucus against him.

    Finally, are we supposed to feel sorry for Franken because he didn’t get away with what others got away with? Does the hypocrisy of others justify excusing Franken? I don’t think so.

  38. wr says:

    @gVOR08: “Years ago an evening tennis partner whined that liberals would rally behind Blagoyevich and get him off, specifically that MSNBC would defend him. I got home in time to catch Keith Olbermann cut Blago a new one and demand he resign yesterday at the latest.”

    And of course the punchline is that Blago was pardoned by a Republican president.

    1
  39. wr says:

    @Gustopher: Six months ago. Cuomo was all good. Today he’s all evil.

    It would be nice if someone out there could dig up a little perspective. As you said. Cuomo made some mistakes during Covid, and he did some things really right. It’s easy to dismiss his daily press briefings as just a “performance,” but speaking as a New Yorker who found himself watching them every day, they made a big difference.

    And if you think anyone could do that, I invite you to watch one of Trump’s.

    Cuomo is a mixed bag. He’s always been a bully, and he’s always been slavishly devoted to the interests of the rich. But he’s also mostly been a pretty good manager. His personal life looks icky, and the incidents with young women who actually work for him are probably actionable — but the hitting on young women over who he has no direct authority are none of the public’s business, and the justification that, well, they just prove the other stuff is real is just an excuse for scandal mongering.

    What strikes me as odd is that there are two Democratic governors on the coasts, Cuomo and Newsom, both of whom have mixed records, but who are being relentlessly trashed for their mistakes while their successes go unmentioned. And there are Republican governors in Florida and Texas whose sole achievement in office is to murder thousands of their citizens, and at least one of them is being urged to run for president…

    3
  40. @wr:

    and at least one of them is being urged to run for president…

    Yeah, but have you seen who the GOP is willing to nominate? 😉

    3
  41. @wr:

    but the hitting on young women over who he has no direct authority are none of the public’s business, and the justification that, well, they just prove the other stuff is real is just an excuse for scandal mongering.

    BTW, I disagree here. At some point, it becomes part of a larger story and pattern.

    You can parse it out when it is just private, on that we can agree, at least if we are talking simply about him dating younger women and being a bit of a creep about it.

    As it pertains to the wedding story, I would argue there he feels emboldened to behave that way because he is governor, so I am not sure it is wholly separable from his private acts. Especially when it is the case that people tend to behave worse in private than they do in public.

    If all we had was the wedding story, I almost certainly would not have commented, but his problems are snowballing and from two directions. (And that fact that he did better than Trump with Covid is the faintest of faint praise, yes?).

    1
  42. Gustopher says:

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    And that fact that he did better than Trump with Covid is the faintest of faint praise, yes?

    Except he did so much better than Trump. He deserves enormous praise if the baseline is Trump.

    He made mistakes that cost lives, he tried to cover up the results of the mistakes, and STILL so much better than Trump. James’s equivalence between the two is preposterous.

    I think the baseline should be Newsome, who made mistakes but didn’t cover them up (I think, I’ve not been following California as closely as my home states), in which case Cuomo did poorly because of the coverup, and is doing poorly on distribution. And Inslee is doing great (by a mixture of luck, and clamping down hard enough when things first began rising that he didn’t have to make the decisions they had to make in NY, which in all fairness he might have gotten wrong too).

    1
  43. Kathy says:

    I saw some of Cuomo’s COVID briefings on CNN in May during my very brief lockdown working from home. He struck me as mostly ok.

    But we should get one thing straight. In the vast majority of western countries, developed and under-developed, pretty much no one got it right on COVID. Australia and New Zealand are the major exceptions, as well as some small countries in Central America.

    America under Trump got it spectacularly wrong, as can be seen in the numbers of cases and deaths. But overall much of the west has been more concerned with keeping the economy going, than with saving people from infection and death.

    3
  44. MarkedMan says:

    @inhumans99:

    in the early days it seemed like Cuomo was the anti-Trump, happy to give daily pressers, made the right moves shutting NY down, and just getting line with the experts advice that we might be able to flatten the curve if citizens were forced to endure some SIP hardships for 60-90 days

    I spent over 20 years living in and around New York and still stay in touch with the goings on there, and my impression of those days were Giulliani and 9/11 redux. I’m not claiming that Cuomo is AS bad or AS phony as Giulliani during the 9/11 crisis, but that people were desperate for strong guidance and so latched onto someone who sounded strong without understanding who the person was at their core.

    I know I, for one, made that mistake with Giulliani and didn’t really start to think differently of him until the Rykers Island scandals and the Bernie Kerik mess and then it started to snowball. It culminated when I was at a friend’s house for a party and said something negative about Giulliani, then caught myself. My friend was a NYC cop as were a number of others and so I said, “Sorry, I know you guys probably feel different about him.” The reply was basically, “Oh no, we hate his guts. He fired a great Chief of Police so he could take credit for crime reduction, and then when 9/11 happened he pulled the fire and police chiefs out of the field when they were needed the most and paraded around Manhattan with them showboating to reporters. We had friends die because of that prick.”

    1
  45. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    As it pertains to the wedding story, I would argue there he feels emboldened to behave that way because he is governor,

    Or he’d had a couple glasses of Champagne. Let every het man who has never hit on a woman unsuccessfully while under the influence, raise their hand. I suspect not many hands went up, and those that did are almost certainly lying.

    If we are going to eliminate every guy who tried it on with a woman he shouldn’t have, we’ll have no one left in any position. This is a ridiculous and unsustainable standard. As I’ve said from the start, we need law on this, not specious conflation of horrors like rape or clear abuses of power with just being a bit of a pig.

    3
  46. Liberal Capitalist says:

    (reposted from the Tuesday forum)

    I just find this amazing

    Cuomo: “Can I kiss you?”

    SEXUAL HARRASSMENT !!!! HE MUST RESIGN!!11!

    Trump: “I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and f*** her. She was married….. I moved on her like a bitch… You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait…. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything…. Grab them by the p****. You can do anything.”

    Clearly, the latter has been sent by god to save America.

    This shit is exhausting.

    As a Democrat, I can tell you: If Cuomo harassed, there should be consequences. If harassment borders or became abuse, he should step aside.

    Because I believe in fairness, justice and that the rules apply to all.

    So, please somebody explain to me why 74 million Americans don’t.

  47. Lounsbury says:

    @Michael Reynolds: So deeply American all this, right back to the roots as it were, albeit in a Left lens.

    1
  48. Gustopher says:

    @wr:

    What strikes me as odd is that there are two Democratic governors on the coasts, Cuomo and Newsom, both of whom have mixed records, but who are being relentlessly trashed for their mistakes while their successes go unmentioned. And there are Republican governors in Florida and Texas whose sole achievement in office is to murder thousands of their citizens, and at least one of them is being urged to run for president…

    Meanwhile, in the Great State of Texas:

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) lifted the state’s mask requirement and increased capacity of all businesses to 100 percent on Tuesday, at a moment when public health officials are warning that new, more transmissible variants could be taking hold.

    A steady decline in new cases stalled this week across the U.S., and cases actually increased slightly in Texas, the second most-populous state in the country. More than 6,000 people were hospitalized with covid-19 in Texas on Tuesday. More than 1,700 of those patients were in intensive care units.

    Abbott said the “state mandates are no longer needed.”

    Well, now that things are beginning to work, it’s time to give up on them.

    I assume this means that Abbott is in the running for 2024. Sacrificing the people of his state for his viability on the national Republican stage is generally a sign of that.

    Cuomo, for all his faults and mistakes, does not come close to the deliberate failures of the Republican governors like Abbott.

    3
  49. Kathy says:

    @Gustopher:

    Meanwhile, in the Great State of Texas:

    Maybe the Central Committee of the Party needs more COVID deaths to hang on Biden.

  50. @Michael Reynolds:

    Let every het man who has never hit on a woman unsuccessfully while under the influence, raise their hand. I suspect not many hands went up, and those that did are almost certainly lying.

    Well, I can honestly raise my hand, but I am not sure that is the issue.

    If we are going to eliminate every guy who tried it on with a woman he shouldn’t have, we’ll have no one left in any position. This is a ridiculous and unsustainable standard.

    But that isn’t the issue (not that I have scoped out an exact position on Cuomo, save to note that I think he is in trouble).

    But I will stake out this position: we need to deal with men who use their positions to prey on women in their employ and, as a broader issue, we need to promote equal treatment of human beings in the workplace.

    3
  51. wr says:

    @Gustopher: “And Inslee is doing great”

    Well, sure, but Seattle isn’t a place where most of the media live, so no one cares.

    Just like the Malvo/Muhammed murders weren’t important when they were happening in Washington State and Arizona and Louisiana. But once they started shooting people on the Beltway, it was the only story in the world that mattered.

  52. wr says:

    @Michael Reynolds: “Let every het man who has never hit on a woman unsuccessfully while under the influence, raise their hand. I suspect not many hands went up, and those that did are almost certainly lying.”

    Oh, come on. Surely there are some gay men here…

    2
  53. wr says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: “But I will stake out this position: we need to deal with men who use their positions to prey on women in their employ and, as a broader issue, we need to promote equal treatment of human beings in the workplace.”

    There you go, making outrageous pronouncements for clicks again!

    2
  54. Bill says:

    Let’s not forget about the old folks that he sent to die, that’s what started this fracas. That the media covered his ass was pure partisan politics, that he accepted an Emmy and book deal was beyond pathetic.

    1
  55. @wr: Call me crazy!

  56. @Bill:

    Let’s not forget about the old folks that he sent to die, that’s what started this fracas.

    Honest question: are you reading the post before you comment? (“Given his problems with Covid cases and nursing homes in New York “).

    That the media covered his ass was pure partisan politics, that he accepted an Emmy and book deal was beyond pathetic.

    This is the right-wing talking point at the moment, and there is no doubt Cuomo had his moment in the media sun, but are you missing the fact that these stories are being broken by the NYT, WaPo, and so forth?

    5
  57. Thomm says:

    @Gustopher: yup…she was pretty damn quiet about it and it was pointed out at the time. The overriding excuse was that it was either the other chamber or the other party, so what leverage would she have? The other fun one was that someone that pointed it out had mysoginst leanings.

    The fact is that those quips you deride and minimize were effective and made him a popular voice to make the rounds of the news shows as well as social media. That is how a message spreads.

    How quickly we forget that at the time gillabrand’s star was rising in the party and she had already been making noises to run for the nomination. The #metoo movement was in its early stages as well, so getting the caucus to rally around a (at the time) rising star who bulld herself as a chmpion of it was no big feat. And, your comment about the unlikely reelection of franken ignores the polling that went on in minnesota at the time that showed him barely lose any support.
    I am not using the hypocrisy of others to defend him. Personally, I think a censure and loss of a committee or two would have been warranted for the level that these accusations had. Whatever…what is done is done. Maybe his replacement will one day be as well known as him and be able to transmit an effective liberal/progressive message to the masses and not just be a reliable vote, which seems to be all that matters in the end.

  58. Gustopher says:

    @Bill:

    the old folks that he sent to die

    He didn’t send old folks to die, he sent old folks to infect other old folks. And, hospital overcrowding was a very serious concern (hell, morgue overcrowding was a very serious concern), and people didn’t realize how easily covid was spread, so it was a bad decision made with imperfect information.

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    This is the right-wing talking point at the moment, and there is no doubt Cuomo had his moment in the media sun

    I recall our friend JKB was making comments about Cuomo murdering old people back roughly when it was happening, but the entire right wing media machine has so discredited itself that no one outside of the right wing takes them seriously. There he was parroting right wing talking points that had a small kernel of truth (a mistake does not equal murder, etc), and no one listened because he lied so very often when this time he was just grossly mischaracterizing!

    I stand by my accusation of JKB committing blood libel, by ascribing deliberate malicious intent.

    So, I’m willing to put a share of the blame on the right wing, for so distorting truth that no one can trust them. Ten months ago (or however long), the NYTimes should have been on the nursing home situation. As should oversight boards, the CDC, etc — because we were stumbling through it, and mistakes were being made and they were repeated elsewhere.

    But, it was circulating in the right wing, right along-side Covid is a Hoax, and Chlorohydroxyquin!, and probably BENGHAZI!!!!! rearing its head for some reason, because BENGHAZI!!!!! always rears its head. And I’m sure the Pillow Guy had something to say about something crazy. So, instead of oversight, we were treated to a performance of Peter and the Wolf.

    It’s like the Bill Clinton rape claims. At this point, if clear evidence of Bill Clinton raping someone came out, no one outside of the far right would believe it, because there has been such a swirling cesspool of bullshit created out of nowhere that people would assume this was just more of that.

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  59. @Gustopher: It is wholly fair to criticize the slowness of the reporting (and while I have a sense that this is true and fair, I do not have enough info to fully and adequately assess all of that). But I find it tiresome that in the now, with the mainstream media quite clearly focused on Cuomo in a very negative way, to pretend the “MSM” is protecting him.

    1
  60. Just Another Ex-Republican says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Or he’d had a couple glasses of Champagne. Let every het man who has never hit on a woman unsuccessfully while under the influence, raise their hand.

    Granted: Republican hypocrisy on this issue is nauseating.

    But…REALLY? He’s old enough to be her father and obviously aware she was married, and you’re going to write it off as “boys will be boys”? Quite a lot of us are capable of raising our hands and saying we’ve never taken a shot at someone married and half our age, regardless of alcohol imbibed and regardless of if our attempt was successful or not!

    And that’s just basic decency, without getting into whether people who want to be seen as leaders should be held to higher standards or not.

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  61. Gustopher says:

    @Thomm: Here’s a thought: Maybe Franken shouldn’t have been grabbing women’s asses once he entered politics.

    In the grand scheme of things, it is less horrible than many, many things others get away with, but on the other hand, in the grand scheme of things, fuck him. The man was a walking time bomb, and at least it went off before he decided to run for President or in the middle of a campaign.

    There were something like ten accusations with about half of them being butt grabbing, and about half from when he entered politics. and there were reports of more women in the wings who really didn’t want to go public.

    He probably could have contained the damage had he been open and honest, rather than clamming up and letting more and more accusations pile up uncountered and unacknowledged. But he didn’t. Just flesh out a statement like “I’m an ass-grabber. I thought it was funny, but it turns out I’m a moron”

    He was a walking time bomb with a glass jaw. He seems like a weird hill for people to choose to die on.

    Hardly the “talented, motivated, idealistic politician” @Michael Reynolds describes him as. Totally blew it on talented.

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  62. Kathy says:

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    But I find it tiresome that in the now, with the mainstream media quite clearly focused on Cuomo in a very negative way, to pretend the “MSM” is protecting him.

    Once upon a time, talking points at least had to bear some connection, however tenuous, to reality.

    Today, in the age of the cult of trump, they just need to be mae. Like when you’re watching on CNN live coverage of a campaign event Trump claims CNN isn’t covering.

  63. Bill says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: Yeah, like months after the fact. The NYT/Wapo etc. had their agenda so it wasn’t “news” then – but now it’s shelf life is about to expire or something? He must have no cred with the liberal machine that runs NY (into the ground) anymore- why else would they care if he’s sexually molesting chicks? Biden got away with it , why shouldn’t he?

    Gustopher says:
    Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 19:29
    @Bill:

    the old folks that he sent to die

    He didn’t send old folks to die, he sent old folks to infect other old folks. And, hospital overcrowding was a very serious concern (hell, morgue overcrowding was a very serious concern), and people didn’t realize how easily covid was spread, so it was a bad decision made with imperfect information.

    Same trash-different can.

    The bottom pic looks like the Michael/Fredo kiss for the GF2!

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  64. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Gustopher: Or, it could be that Franken realized that, as the saying goes, *if the truth don’t make you free it’s because you ain’t got any freedom comin’.* The failure then may be not realizing that you might as well go with the truth because at least it won’t do more damage.

    Or Franken may not realize that he’s a bit pervy. It’s an easy thing to overlook as self-reflection in a society like ours.

  65. DrDaveT says:

    @Thomm:

    yup…she was pretty damn quiet about it

    Sorry, you lost me exactly there. If you don’t know why… you’re in the wrong century.

  66. DrDaveT says:

    @Bill:

    Biden got away with it , why shouldn’t he?

    You were sooooo close to sounding like a reasonable person… but no. You’re such a tease.

  67. Teve says:

    @Kathy:

    The second part is called Y2K. Lots 0f people complained that nothing happened on January 1st 2000.

    1) I had a relative who was into conspiracy theories who was 100% convinced that evil Bill Clinton was going to use Y2K as a justification for declaring Martial Law and becoming dictator. When he died in 2019 he still refused to admit he was wrong, just that Clinton had “delayed it”.

    2) having been, many years ago, a physicist, I happen to have a lot of friends who are programmers. Most of them had to do something to deal with Y2K. One woman who was a COBOL programmer was offered $100/hr by a bank. It was a serious problem, and serious people fixed it.

    PS: don’t read this as me correcting Kathy. I’m just discussing a topic she brought up. I haven’t seen her be wrong about any of this.

  68. Teve says:

    @Teve: Assuming I just know a random scattering of people, that means most programmers were involved in Y2K.