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.
I grew up in the People’s Republic and was stationed back there for 4 years while St Mario the Pious emitted his Smug as head of the Politburo
One of the most telling things I saw was so small.
Local Merchants were seeing a small windfall as people just got tired of turning in the Bottles and cans for the 5 cent deposit.
St Mario decreed that the unrefunded nickel belonged to the state and not the merchant.
These were the merchants that had to set aside space and dedicate employees to the collection of, storage, and transport of the returned bottles and cans.
The unrefunded nickels only partially went to pay for the original unfunded mandate of the state. Alas, St Mario wanted his goddamned nickel.
If Cuomo had been on the Supreme Court, his voting record probably would not have been much different from Ginsburg's...but his death would have given Obama a chance to pick a young Communist/feminist radical for his replacement who would be there for the next 30 years.