Wednesday, November 5, 2014

This Is Not 2010

From the NY Times:

Mr. Cuomo’s re-election was far from smooth. The governor was vilified by liberals and embarrassed in the Democratic primary by an obscure challenger, and he watched his national reputation eroded by revelations of questionable ethics and a rushed Ebola response that was criticized by the White House.  
More troubling for Mr. Cuomo, perhaps, is that his botched coronation has punctured his carefully cultivated aura of invincibility. A leader who rules by fear, Mr. Cuomo will begin his second term facing a newly emboldened press corps and a Legislature that has seen his political vulnerabilities laid bare.  
“People are not going to feel the kind of loyalty to the governor that they have felt before,” said Kenneth Sherrill, who taught politics for decades at Hunter College. “Nobody’s going to want to cross him, but I don’t think they’re going to want to help him, either.”

Cuomo has a Republican Senate backing him.

He's going to try and claim the 54% he won last night is a mandate to govern the way he wants.

But he's not as strong as he'd like to believe he is.

He is still under investigation by a federal prosecutor for the Moreland mess.

 He needed de Blasio's help to dispatch with Zephyr Teachout during Working Families Party weekend last May.

He still saw Teachout win 34% of the vote in the primary in September.

He outspent Rob Astorino 9 to 1 and still only won by 13.5%.

People on the left and right are sick of him, even the people who voted for him did so without really liking him and he has made a lot of enemies his first four years.

This is NOT 2011 when he rammed through his agenda.

He CAN be stopped when he tries to "break" the public school system, as he has promised to do, and he can be stopped when he tries to revise APPR to be more punitive.

He is vulnerable - he won election for governor with the fewest votes since FDR.

This is not 2010.

Hell, it's not even 1930.

2 comments:

  1. Weingarten voted for Cuomo!

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    1. Of course she did. That was always the plan - as was making sure he got the WFP line and kept a third party challenger off of it.

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