Posted on 01/02/2015 6:05:11 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The death of Mario Cuomo today at age 82 marks the final end for one of the great “what if” figures in American politics.
Today, the Left’s standard bearer is Elizabeth Warren, a senator from Massachusetts who was first elected to office only two years ago. Back in the 1980s, the liberal heartthrob was Mario Cuomo.
The governor of New York from 1983 to 1995, Cuomo was long considered the great hope of the Left, especially after his riveting keynote speech to the 1984 Democratic National Convention. In it he contrasted Ronald Reagan’s vision of America as a “shining city on a hill” with what he claimed was a more accurate description.
“There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don’t see, in the places that you don’t visit, in your shining city,” Cuomo told the Democratic delegates, who went on to nominate Walter Mondale and lose 49 out of 50 states that year.
But liberals believed Cuomo had the magic to win and relentlessly promoted him as the Democratic stand bearer in 1988 and 1992. Both times, Cuomo stalled and finally declined to run, earning the nickname “Hamlet on the Hudson.”
Cuomo ultimately turned down another big opportunity after Bill Clinton became president in 1992. Last year, Clinton told a New York fundraiser that he offered Cuomo a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.
“He is the first man in the history of this country to turn down a position on the Supreme Court, and it’s because he was dedicated to New York,” Clinton told a gathering of donors to Help USA, a homeless aid organization founded by current New York governor Andrew Cuomo, Mario’s son.
Only 18 months after he turned down the Supreme Court appointment, Cuomo was defeated for a fourth term by Republican George Pataki. He retired then from politics at the age of 62.
A decent man who believed passionately in his liberal ideology, Cuomo lived to see the economic policies he champion gradually leave the state he so loved in steady decline. Just last week, the Census Bureau announced that New York has been surpassed in population by economically thriving Florida as the nation’s third-largest state.
Speak no ill of the dead.
Guess I can’t post anything then.
Oh. I thought he was going to say it was because Coomo was a fake Indian who practiced law withoiut a license.
why?
Because all the goddam Noo Yawk Leftist snowbirds are here!
I will.
I note without remorse a dead Leftist. As he walks through the gates of Hell, his last words will be “but my intentions were good...”
Andrew still sucks.
I can hear Bob Grant now...
Reagan was the optimist while Cuomo played the pessimistic class warrior.
Reagan inspired people to work together to make things better and Cuomo inspired envy and jealousy.
There ya go...
Yeah? And I suppose there were no faces of despair in the cities you governed, eh, Mario?
As if he was a man of the people.
Liberals: it’s all about the hype (which turns out to be lies)
Then he'll be recognized for his part in paving the access road.
Why not?
I live in NY, some of it under the Cuomo regime.
He was a POS, and death didn’t come for him soon enough.
He was a liar, a fraud, in no ways a decent man.
He was corrupt, completely incapable of basic moral decency.
And NY carries on in his tradition.
*spits*
RE: Speak no ill of the dead.
Don’t you think Mario would have been pleased to be compared to Lizzy Warren?
Cuomo was a heavyweight in politics. Comparing him to Warren is a joke.
If Warren goes on to any national success (which has eluded all left-wingers from Massachusetts), it’s only because the the nation has moved into a failed-state mode. Cuomo was a powerful governor and good speaker. Warren is a fraud 1/32nd Indian academic with zero real world experience. She’s Obama without the political charisma.
At least he will be warm.
Hitler vas, shore, a ferry badt mann, but at least he luft docs undt schilderns.
I hadn't paid much attention to MC after he left office, and I was not aware Clinton had offered him a Supreme Court nomination. I'm a bit skeptical that he could have been confirmed in the modern climate.
Perceptions can turn on little things. I once caught a part of Cuomo's radio show -- one of our local stations, for a period, tried for a bit of talk radio balance, as they already carried Limbaugh and Hannity, and experimented with liberal talkers as well. Some grungy reality story about New York City housing projects was in the news. This must have been during the Pataki and/or Giuliani years, because Cuomo was fairly hissing into the microphone about how "they" had warehoused the poor in such horrific conditions.
This was a truly infuriating comment, given that Cuomo had until recently been the governor, had held that post for 364 years (or did it just seem that long), and was a paladin of the liberal establishment that both built the public housing empire and turned it into a disaster. It was an opening for a useful conversation about, "Here is what we did, and why; this is what went wrong; here is what we learned." Instead, all the history was down the memory hole. All personal complicity was forgotten. And all the problems were the fault of the evil Republicans, presumably for not pouring even more money down the same black hole.
I should probably try to think better of him today, but frankly, it was very hard after that brief moment to ever again regard him as a serious figure.
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