For four hours on Saturday, the W.F.P.’s convention was a collective group therapy session, where dozens of members of the left-wing of New York’s Democratic party aired their long-building displeasure with Cuomo.
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It was a bizarro version of the Democratic convention earlier in May, where Cuomo was the unquestioned star and lawmakers carefully avoided criticizing him.
At the Desmond, Cuomo was target practice.
He won the line, but not before many W.F.P. members took the podium at the hotel to flog him publicly, repeatedly calling him a “liar” who’d abandoned his own party.
Among the dissidents was former ACORN head Bertha Lewis. She took the podium and said of Cuomo’s nomination, “Well, I beg to differ.”
“We gave him four years and we said then, never again,” she said.
She brought the crowd to its feet.
In a brutal speech in support of Teachout, Capital Region delegate Susan Weber decried Cuomo’s support for charter schools run by “rich bastards” and urged the party not to accept the deal with Cuomo.
“What's the problem with that deal? He’s a liar,” she said referring to Cuomo. “He won’t keep his promise. He’ll figure out a way to squirm out of it.”
“I was under the impression we were never going to do the same thing we’ve done before and expect a different result,” she said.
“There's a word for that and it’s called psychosis. We are not psychotic!”
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Pro-Cuomo speeches were frequently interrupted by cries of “coward!” and “bullshit!” from the audience.
None of the rank-and-file party members spoke on Cuomo’s behalf.
In the end, Cuomo got what he wanted - the WFP ballot line and no WFP candidate running from his left in the general election.
And Cuomo made no bones about that today:
On Sunday, Cuomo was in New York City to march in a parade in honor of Israel. He told reporters that the fight on Saturday night didn’t matter.
“It’s very simple at these political conventions: you either win or you lose,” he said.
“You know, the Democratic Party, we have a big tent, we have a lot of people with a lot of opinions and everybody has a voice and everybody wants to use it. So, part of being a Democrat is the lively debate among the people in the party.”
“But at the end of the day I won the endorsement and that’s what really relevant.”
And he has a point about that.
But the anger that was displayed at the WFP convention last night, as so ably covered by Laura Nahmias in her Capital NY article, as demonstrated in last night's tweets from reporters and other observers at the convention, is not going to go away just because Cuomo won the WFP endorsement.
In fact, if anything, it's going to simmer and bubble to a boil, particularly as the arrogant Cuomo continues to treat liberals and progressives around the state with disdain and scorn.
What happens with that anger after that, well, it's anybody's guess.
But if Cuomo thinks he put to rest his problems from the left with last night's rigged WFP convention vote, he's got another thing coming.
