Here are some preliminary numbers on the results from the Cuomo/Teachout showdown:
The Five Boroughs
Brooklyn: Cuomo 67% Teachout 30%
Manhattan: Cuomo 55% Teachout 43%
Queens: Cuomo 74% Teachout 22%
Staten Island: Cuomo 66% Teachout 30%
The Bronx: Cuomo 81% Teachout 14%
Meanwhile, Teachout won big in many Upstate counties. This is telling for a couple of reasons. Common wisdom is that the Big City is much more liberal than Upstate, but that doesn’t seem to hold for the Democratic primary voter. That’s curious until you look at the how the boroughs voted and you realize that Cuomo did much better in The Bronx (37% black) and Brooklyn (34% black) than he did in Manhattan (16% black). Manhattan is also the home of a lot of Wall Street workers who actually like Cuomo’s brand of centrism. That Cuomo got 81% of the vote in the Bronx (28% white) and only 66% of the vote in Staten Island (11% black) is the giveaway. White progressives who backed the Teachout/Wu ticket did not make any inroads with the black community.
It’s not obvious why Cuomo is so popular in the black (and I have to add, Latino) community, but he clearly is. And that demonstrates a certain lack of communication between the white and non-white progressive coalitions.
It’s something that needs to be fixed. Progressive candidates need messages and platforms that reach and resonate with progressive citizens. If they can’t even accomplish that, then there’s really no hope for progressivism in this country.
Interesting observation. Likely more a function of DEM machines than any particular affiliation for Cuomo. Let’s not forget that in 2008 Hillary had the Black vote wrapped up until she and Bill made the calculation to play the race card in NH because otherwise she’d lose. But that stunt cost her the subsequent primary in SC.
I also found it interesting that Teachout/Wu won by large margins in so many smaller counties. Although the turnout was pathetic.
A number I want to see is cost/vote. With 100% name recognition and by his own estimation, Cuomo is doing a great job, why would he have had to spend any money at all?
A shame voters are willing to vote for anyone that refuses to debate opponents.
Thanks for your comment. Just anecdotal evidence from me: it was Obama’s Iowa win that switched a lot of African-American voters away from Clinton in 2008. A lot of “I didn’t think white folks in places like Iowa would ever vote for a black man for president, but if they’re going to then he actually has a chance to win…so of course I’d vote for him in that case” reasoning.
May have been anecdotal, but the polls in late 2007 and early 2008 clearly showed a huge advantage for Clinton in the African-American community and she had most of the African-American super-delegates committed to her before the Iowa caucus. Difficult to know if Black Democrats preferred Clinton or supported her because they considered her the most electable.
Electability is important, but that’s really a function of the quality of the candidate. In 2007 I didn’t see any racial impediment for Obama or gender impediment for Clinton to being elected POTUS. But I most definitely didn’t want a third Clinton neoliberalcon term and still don’t. Given the choices, Obama was the best candidate. Did find it disturbing that Clinton during the primaries and to a lesser extent McCain in the general election appealed to voters on the basis of race. That possibly pushed some whites and blacks into voting based on identity instead of the policy preference of what the candidates offered.
I have to agree. By 2008, Black people were past symbolism. If a Black candidate was gonna get their vote, it was because they felt he had a chance to win the nomination. When 97% Iowa put him first, that was a stunner. I know my late mother, born and raised in the Police State known as Jim Crow Mississippi, could only stare at the tv screen in disbelief as the results from the Iowa Caucus came in.
97% White Iowa
Oprah was likely a big help there considering that white women do trust her. But before Oprah came on board, there were a lot of people doing the hard grunt work and a lot of people that believed enough to donate small amounts to his campaign. (And a few wealthy people that could write large checks and hold fundraisers.)
In 1972 I thought the day an African-American was elected POTUS would come sooner than it did. And that Julian Bond might be that man. Alas, I wasn’t prescient enough to recognize that we we at the beginning and not the end of a dark period in US politics.
Matt Stoller 5 Reasons for the Zephyr Teachout Phenomenon, and 5 Reasons Andrew Cuomo Is Still Governor nails it.
And that’s just one of his nine points (plus a couple more that others added).
$48/vote plus 100% name recognition v. $2.79/vote plus close to zero name recognition four months ago wins wins at least 99% of the time.
Oops — appears as if those cost/vote figures are incorrect. Cuomo spent almost $20 million if all his re-election costs are included.
Cuomo cost/vote $60.62
Teachout $1.57
progressive activist are their own worse enemies when it comes to minority audiences. People hate feeling condescended to from opponents and even more so from alleged “allies”.
case in point? Now tell me why would Black folk give a listen to progressives when their loudest supporters are idiots like Michael Moore. I know he doesn’t represent all progressive activists, but he is closely aligned with the side and he has a big enough bullhorn that when he shoves his foot in his mouth it gets noticed and aligned with progressives, fairly or unfairly.
Michael Moore Slams Obama: HIstory Will Only Remember You Were a Black President
What a jackass that man is. The white Cornel West.
What do you think Obama will be remembered for a 100 years from now? Far from being a “jackass,” Michael Moore has it about right and concedes that at least he will be remembered unlike most Presidents.
Based on his competition, I expect that he will be considered one of the best presidents we have ever had. I was born in 1969 and he is without question the best president we’ve had while I’ve been alive. It’s not even close. LBJ made too many blunders, JFK had too short of a term. Truman was so bad that he declined to run again. Wilson was a virulent racist. Teddy was too much of an imperialist.
I think Obama ranks just below FDR and Lincoln, frankly.
Only Presidents with mega-accomplishments or a singular status are remembered by the general public. That is a short list — Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. Obama will likely be the fourth to make the list based on status. (Would anyone under the age of fifty today include JFK because he was the first Catholic President? Will he be remembered any better than Garfield or McKinley for having been assassinated? Probably not. Nixon might be remembered for having been the only POTUS to resign, but that too will fade with time.) We’re talking a hundred years hence and not your personal observations of the men who have been president since you’ve had the cognitive ability to evaluate them which is after age seventeen regardless of how precocious you were and that hasn’t been a very long time.
A shame really because a few did have significant positive accomplishments and exhibited vision in spite of not being perfect. Apparently their imperfections with no allowance for the times they were alive is how you discount the limited number of half-decent Presidents this country has had.
Washington gets remembered for being the first but not so much for setting limitations and tone on the presidency. Teddy, for those that remember him for the pluses, gets trust busting, national parks, and the first round of progressivism.
Wilson is as forgotten as Taft, Harding and Coolidge. Hoover is but a blip higher only because the depression was great.
Truman was sixty-eight years old and missed his wife who refused to participate in DC life. He was out of his depth on FP, but he did veto Taft-Hartley, gets credit for war crime tribunals, the Marshall Plan, proposed national health care (only the UK went for it), and managed to get a Democratic Congress for four out of his six election years. On that last measure alone he has outperformed Obama.
On domestic policy, LBJ was first rate. Almost up there with FDR. Yet, he is remembered more for the Vietnam War (even if Nixon ran the second half of it and Ike initiated it) and we conveniently overlook the fact that as a nation we learned nothing from that disastrous/monstrous war and happily trotted off to another one eleven years ago and it’s still with us.
On domestic policy, LBJ was first rate. Almost up there with FDR.
Unless you’re saying that Obama was also first rate, this is the nostalgia talking. FDR was awful on domestic policy; pure social conservatives would find little to criticize about his administration after 13 years despite the tokenism.
A lot of leftists, such as myself, don’t exactly like how the post-Nixon Democratic Party has to lick the bootheel of corporate America. But few things are as infuriating as older liberals bragging that they didn’t have to lick any bootheels when FDR to LBJ clearly had to tongue-clean the assholes of the Sheriff Joes and Bob Ewells.
No — I have been speaking of the domestic programs initiated and championed by FDR and LBJ without any nostalgia clouding my assessment or appreciation. Not even FDR claimed his were enough — and he advocated for more.
The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 were huge. As was Medicare/Medicaid. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The Food Stamp Act of 1964 (restoring and improving on the one that FDR had initiated). Head Start. HUD.
The list of programs that were instituted during FDR’s and LBJ’s are impressive. Not tweaks and modifications, most were created out of whole cloth and have stood the test of time.
“Not just tweaks and modifications” – exactly right! Bold, creative, courageous action. When I think of American exceptionalism, that is what I think of.
Let’s not forget the “first-rate” domestic policy of LBJ of siccing the FBI and CIA (and later Army Intel) on peaceful and mostly law-abiding war protesters, treating lawful political dissent domestically as a major crime and even as treasonous activity.
Well, some of us might have seen that coming had we known at the time that LBJ had early in ’65 arranged to have his own VP’s office bugged to keep a close watch on Hubert’s perceived disloyal activities.
The FBI was sicced on law-abiding and peaceful citizens long before LBJ. COINTELPRO officially began in August, 1956. In October of 1956 FBI head J. Edgar Hoover included the FBI’s ongoing surveillance of Black leaders in COINTELPRO. The secret program was revealed in 1971 and Hoover asserted in that same year that it had been dismantled. FBI shenanigans in the ensuing years suggest a rose by any other name.
No doubt, just as the US involvement in VN didn’t start w Lyndon. But I was referencing specifically the war on dissenters of Lyndon’s War and how he and his aides tried to stifle, destroy and generally make unpopular peaceful dissent by covertly using various intel agencies to put protesters of the war out of business.
And again, Johnson is not unique (or even an outlier) in that regard.
I don’t recall arguing that he was unique.
Except it is noteworthy when a Dem president engages in such reactionary domestic behavior, especially a dubious warmongering president who seems to be getting an unwarranted revisionist treatment from a few poorly-counseled souls in the progosphere.
Truman also integrated the Army. That was a major accomplishment. And a major cause of white backlash against him.
Yes, too short of a term as president. But still the best even with only two years, 10 months and two days.
Especially as we consider how he bravely fought against the nat’l security establishment/Pentagon/CIA to avoid a massive military involvement in VN, Laos, Cuba and as he went against these same advisers to avoid an all-out nuclear war with the Russkies.
Contrast with Johnson: did probably the worst thing a president can do, sending our military on a major scale to fight an unnecessary war, all while knowing how unwinnable it was.
Lyndon’s War nearly destroyed this country along with Vietnam. That’s sufficient reason to rank him no better than somewhere in the middle of the pack of presidents — elevated that far only because of good domestic programs passed during his presidency. To be noted however that those same programs would have passed with any other Dem — this side of George Wallace — in office at that time.
I would take Teddy the imperialist over any of the Republicans we have today. He at least had some progressive instincts.
I have to be honest and say that I think Obama is fairly mediocre and yet he’s done enough good to be up there right below FDR and Lincoln considering the rest of the lot.
so Barack Obamas only accomplishment is his Blackness? is that what you are saying? Does the ACA mean nothing, or at the very least getting country on better financial standing that it was under GWB.
I could list more but I’m pretty sure you will shoo shoo it anyway.
I just want to be clear that you and Moore are saying that the only MAJOR thing that will be looked back on the Obama presidency is his Blackness.
JFK was first catholic Prez, when we look back do we see him only as first Catholic?
So the usual whitewashing of the accomplishment of people of color in the history books has started before the ink is even dry on the Obama Presidency.
A hundred years from now, yes, he will be remembered for being the first Black POTUS.
No, the PPACA will not be remembered all that far into the future as a major accomplishment because it’s a temporary fix to a major problem (and also didn’t include ten of millions of US residents). The problem is that the US spending on health care was 17-18% of GDP and the ACA will increase that by at least a percentage or two. That is at least fifty percent more than is spent by comparable, industrialized and wealthy countries. In those countries, everybody is covered, nobody goes bankrupt for co-pays, their health care outcome equal or exceed ours, and their populations are older, some significantly older, than ours.
Adding fifty percent more to the national debt to bail out the big banks without correcting what led to the financial meltdown isn’t going to look good when Great Recession 2.0 hits.
Memories fade. In 1960 it was a big deal that the first Catholic was elected POTUS. I was a kid then and a Catholic; so, it seemed like a really big deal to me even as I had no understanding of politics or government. It’s hardly remember, much less considered important, today. Reagan was the first POTUS to have been divorced. Would have been disqualifying a few years earlier. Since then three divorced and remarried men have been nominated.
Legacies aren’t written by contemporary fans or supporters of political figures. Perspectives change with time. None of us like to think they will, but they do. I will always loathe Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes, but already for many in this country the memory of the disasters brought to us by GWB are beginning to fade. You may not believe, but can’t you really think that Obama won’t be subject to the same process?
Just for the record, about 25 million Americans (already) have health insurance because of the ACA. Over 100 million have benefited from the elimination of recissions, pre-existing condition bans, (sometimes onerous) payments for essential health services, etc. Not to mention the radical improvements in mental health care coverage.
The ACA is actually decreasing spending on healthcare. Even though the economy is now growing at an average pace, healthcare cost increases are at record lows.
The ACA also basically fixed the long-term Medicare shortfall. As a result of the ACA, the CBO shortfall forecast fell by about 2/3s. The remainder can be easily covered by payroll tax increases.
A few months into the Iraq war banners of “Mission Accomplished” were flying and that was a much simpler proposition than the PPACA. It expanded Medicaid not Medicare and in the short run for those states that have accepted it, it is extremely helpful to the millions that have qualified for it. But it doesn’t aggregate reduce health care costs — it moves some of the pieces on the board around. Might even reduce per capita healthcare costs for those all those now insured, but not by much and the aggregate in MA (the only laboratory for this model in the US that has been in place for a few years) increased. A very serious concern is the number of hospitals and clinics in various locations in the country that are now being shuttered because financial resources were taken away from them.
How about we table this discussion for about six years when actual results will begin to be available?
Just for the record: one major difference between “Obamacare” and “Romneycare” is that “Romneycare” made no attempt to deal with cost control. The political calculation made by its drafters was that if/when universal coverage was achieved, then everyone would have a stake in cost control (and a stake in not achieving “cost control” by cutting insurance for poor and working-class people).
By contrast, congressional Democrats packed the ACA with virtually every cost-control policy idea they could think of.
To say that Mr. Obama has no accomplishments is just emoprog whining, but he has definitely fell short and own-goaled himself in a lot of ways. President Obama gave us the ACA but its political and bureaucratic administration was haphazard. He saved the country from going the way of 2007+ EU but the stimulus was inadequate due to him massively underestimating the extent of Republican opposition. He showed how to build a coalition that didn’t rely on Reagan Democrats but needlessly antagonized portions of his voting base. He wriggled out of the debt ceiling debacle but hamstrung his own economic recovery with that fiscal cliff nonsense.
I think that a ‘holding pattern’ assessment of his Presidency is a defensible position, if a bit too early. If someone ran the Southern Strategy in 1952 and prematurely ended the New Deal Coalition, FDR wouldn’t be remembered as a transformative President; he’d be ‘remembered’ as a holding pattern President like Madison or GHWB or Eisenhower. But holding pattern Presidents aren’t, unfortunately for this country, known for anything besides stereotypes when the country deigns to remember them at all.
Every POTUS has accomplishments. Even Nixon had a couple that weren’t bad. I didn’t say Obama hasn’t had any. You see his as phenomenal. I don’t. They are few in number and mostly timid or tweaks to existing programs. (Michelle’s advocacy for healthy school lunches is good.) Most Democrats still think Clinton was great — I think he was a long-term disaster wrt to the financial well being and security for working people. (Total disaster with his (Clinton’s) DADT and DOMA; talk about lack of vision.) Jimmy Carter wasn’t much better, but he only had four years and was less destructive.
Obama like Clinton, has been a disaster for the health of the Democratic party, especially when you consider the state it was in when he got it.
Hillarycare was much more ambitious than Obamacare, and probably failed for that reason.
Obamacare is good, but the major change that is remembered a century later.
Obama is a good man, but basically a legislator not an executive. Sometimes you need a ruthless son of a bitch that will ram things through, like LBJ. If I had to give my kids up for adoption, I’d much rather that they have Obama as a father than Johnson, but that doesn’t make him a memorable President.
Apart from the bogus blank check of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, what major things did Lyndon “ram through”? How can it be said he rammed through or worked his will when, following the landslide ’64 election, he enjoyed a considerable working progressive majority in Congress, with that same majority often pushing him to act more quickly on progressive legislation.
He did more ramming through as Majority Leader — helped enormously not by his savvy or ruthlessness so much as his ability to accumulate power in that office via a massive constant inflow of illicit contributions, which he then dangled in front of senators to influence their votes.
But Obama does need to toughen up in dealing with the obstructionist opposition, stop referring to them softly and ineffectively as mere “folks on the other side of the aisle” who happen to disagree with his proposals. Start calling them out as knee-jerk oppositionist know-nothings who aren’t interested in the welfare of the country but in only preventing him from governing. Enlist his effective major spokespeople — if any — to put out the message. Work with certain members of Congress to reinforce that message.
We need a lot more of the direct, blunt approach of a HST or JFK right now, not the soft-spoken moderate tones seemingly designed not to rile up anyone.
Civil rights Act, Voting Act. You don’t think it took arm twisting to get those old racist Senators to vote “Aye”?
I don’t think Lyndon got any of the old Dem racists, at least the ones from the South, to vote for either CR bill. In the first one, it was a coalition of non- southern Dems and mod/liberal Repubs and several conservatives like Dirksen that finally got it done.
In the second bill, once the new more progressive Congress was sworn in in ’65, no arm twisting of members was necessary as a supermajority was on board.
Oh, might have been some arm twisting: by some liberal Dems and Repub moderates — on Johnson. The sense was, early in ’65, that LBJ was dragging his feet on introducing the bill, and Lyndon indeed had doubts and was initially reluctant to bring a bill to the Hill.
IIRC, Goldwater was the only Senator to vote against them. Old Bigots like Stennis voted for them. Because of a change of heart? Or because a wall was going to fall on him if he didn’t?
No, you’re way off on your facts. All but a few southern congressmen and senators opposed both bills. Stennis of course opposed both.
Come on, people, we’ve got the internet. Let’s use it. (Sigh.)
Sorry for that outburst, but according to Wikipedia, 21 of 22 Southern senators voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as did 97 of 104 Southern representatives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#By_party_and_region
Johnson certainly played an important role in helping those bills become law, but it’s not because he persuaded Stennis, Eastland, et al, to vote for them.
Well, well, Goldwater has been slandered for years as the only Senator to oppose. Thanks for setting the record straight.
First time I’ve ever seen that asserted was in your post above.
However, Sen Goldwater’s Nay vote does get mentioned often as he was the GOP nominee for president that year of 1964, and also because for years he stood proudly as Mr Conservative, and so observers were able to plausibly link conservatism with being anti-civil rights legislation.
I’ve heard it from many people over the years, but never in print. Must be an urban legend.
When people have major symbolism around their reputation, that often obscures their concrete accomplishments or failures. Media and punditry reinforce this tendency. I think this explains a lot about Hillary Clinton’s appeal, for example: that she is a “famous” woman obscures her comparative lack of accomplishments. To a large degree she is famous for being famous.
Obama’s blackness is a symbolic issue because the mere fact of a president being black has, in itself, only symbolic meaning, no matter how strong that symbolism may be. Imagine for a moment (horrible thought) if Clarence Thomas had been the first black president. No matter what he did or didn’t do in his presidency, you could never take it away from him that he’d been the first black president.
Just as Obama’s blackness has allowed his detractors a totally fact-free image of his administration, it can have an analogous effect on some of his admirers.
I think it’s going to take some years after he leaves office before Obama can get a fair rating. And on the broad scale he may never get it, because the reputations of controversial presidents seem to remain a perpetual battleground. Look at JFK or Reagan. But also because their symbolism may get in the way of their actual accomplishments or lack of them.
tell me though, how does what Moore says differ from anything that Beck and Limbaugh and Kkkanity has said?
so Moore’s statement I’d okay, why, cause “he’s on our side” and “we friends”? nope I call BS on it. Moore is expressing disappointment in Obama legislature agenda ok that’s par for the course, but to say that it only his Blackness that’s really memorable about him? how is that not tone deaf the most bigoted then to even settle on?
there are grifters on the left as well. actual change is a threat to their meal ticket and position
I don’t think Michael Moore’s a grifter. He did a lot of good things with his films. I think the real problem with Moore is that his films led progressives to expect more of him than he was able to deliver.
In other words, he turned out to be a disappointment. His limitations became obvious. His world view was closer to the stereotypical “white ethnic” than one would have liked. And his statements did some harm, especially in comparison with what people hoped he would say.
Ironically, failure to meet all expectations is exactly why many progressives have an unbalanced view of Obama as well.
I’m not defending Moore’s stupidities, and maybe his day is passed, but his films did a lot of good.
well yes, I think his views are as you say, close to the “white ethnic”, but I also think it’s all about him. sometimes for some ppl they just want to be in the center of things, they don’t really want to solve the issues. Obama is the opposite – a pragmatist, doesn’t need the credit so much (look what he’s putting up with)
Tell me more.
I have first hand experience with exactly what you are talking about in Philly politics, but I don’t know how it played out in NY.
No real time to get into it I really need to get to bed, but I’ll tell you there are any number of example of this condescending attitude in commenter here at BT and elsewhere in the liberal/progressive activist blogosphere I frequent.
I have read so many things I swear I figured I’d more than likely hear on RWNJ blogs/sites it sometimes makes my head spin, and I’m not even close to being surprised or outraged by much, but even sometime I just have to go…wow.
Doesn’t this assume that the black community is (as) progressive as the white community in all of those counties? What if they just aren’t all that progressive?
You need your brain removed so it can get its routine 100,000 mile maintenance.
People of color in this country make up a much bigger than 50% share of the progressive movement.
Without them, we’re like three white people at an Occupy Kansas City rally.
So much hostility.
Dude, you bring negativity with virtually every comment you make. Heal thyself.
Well, I may be “negative” but I certainly don’t attack the intelligence of posters. And my original post in this thread wasn’t negative, it was a question.
I’m sorry I didn’t know that all black people in NY state are progressives.
My bad?
When have “have nots” ever not been affiliated with progressives? Doesn’t mean that they are actually progressives. What was MLK’s Jr.’s approval/support rating within the African-American community in the last couple of years of his life when he expressed radical progressive thoughts and goals?
WTF are you talking about?
90% of the Progressive Caucus in Congress is made up of people of color and religious minorities. They overwhelmingly represent minority-majority districts.
There are only a handful of non-Jewish white progressives in any positions of power and they represent college towns.
But the college progressives have the megaphone. Guess what? That megaphone is drowning out the actual progressive movement.
The actual progressive movement voted for Cuomo tonight.
Really? 69 members and fewer than seven are not people of color or “religious minorities?” Well, blimey me — guess six of those seven are from California. Only one from PA; so your state isn’t exactly doing well on this measure (but you also only have one that’s in that “90%” and CA has eight.)
You can label those that voted for Cuomo anything you want. But as a primary identification, progressive they aren’t.
But isn’t one of the points here that self-identified “progressives” who can’t win, say, 80+% of the African-American vote and 60+% of the Latino vote have some serious reflection and evaluation to do about their own limitations, mistakes and failings?
That would be the point.
So is your argument is that the ‘actual progressive movement’ supports candidates like Cuomo, or that non-white progressives are ignorant and/or lack agency?
The former strikes me as politically unsupportable, and the latter as a pretty impressive example of just the sort of condescension you rail against.
That’s the age-old gotcha question. Gore used it on Bradley beautifully during the Harlem debate.
The answer is that the progressive movement voted for Cuomo last night for tactical reasons. It’s going too far to say that they like Cuomo. But he’s the Democratic governor and he’s very powerful and the progressives need and want things from him. The mayor needs things from him. The unions don’t want to cross him.
Someone else said that the Teachout/Wu campaign was a hipster campaign. That’s another way of saying that they could get progressive votes because progressives had too much to lose in opposing Cuomo. Hipsters have nothing to lose, so they’re free to experiment.
It’s a perfectly reasonable question. Your answer is perfectly reasonable, too. You’re saying that the actual progressive movement chose Cuomo over Teachout, and won. So this is a victory for the actual progressive movement.
Kind of.
But, remember, this was an election in which the context wasn’t who would win but how much they would win by. In that context, progressives could not prevail so their best bet was to support the powers that be.
What Cuomo actually going to do for progressives? What is he actually going to do to hurt them? I don’t know the situation but based on the collusion with republicans I don’t expect much daylight between a Cuomo who wants revenge against progressives and one who was supported by them.
It would help you to think of progressives as discreet blocks of people with common interests rather than as an ideological preference alone. Unions are a major building block of the progressive movement and they’re very strong in New York, especially public unions. They have a lot of priorities and a lot in common with the rest of the progressive movement, but they are primarily about jobs. Getting on the wrong side of the governor is a bad idea and can be punished in any number of ways.
De Blasio has a city to run, and lacks the authority to run it as he pleases. Making an enemy of Cuomo could undermine his effectiveness and cause him to be defeated for reelection.
Public sector employees don’t want to get a major haircut. Teachers’ unions don’t want to be weakened.
Cuomo already has suspect instincts on these matters, but antagonizing him isn’t going to improve things.
So, progressives with actual skin in the game made a rational choice, while people who fight politically in a more theoretical sense felt free to oppose Cuomo without fear of retribution.
Thanks for laying down some markers on possibke desirable outcomes to their supporting him.
What??? You project an awful lot of thoughts and opinions on people you’ve never met based on a very sketchy look at the exit-numbers in a low turnout election.
You’ve asserted a racial divide, without even putting forth even anecdotal evidence that it exists. You haven’t even demonstrated that blacks prefer Cuomo more than whites do. You’re telling us which boroughs count and which don’t and asserting opinions that exist only in your own head. Now you’re trying to divide the electorate between “real” progressives and “college” progressives. Strangely, you describe the “real” progressive as the one who votes for someone out of fear of the pain he might inflict upon them.
Get over it. All you really know about these voters is that they are all Democrats. This was a primary election. One candidate won, another lost. What’s the point of all the hostility.
“The actual progressive movement voted for Cuomo tonight.”
Yes, well if it did, it has some problems, because it voted for the wrong candidate.
A lot of those problems have to do with machine politics and threats from on high, habit, entrenched habits of voters, and low information. Not actual policy.
Far from berating Teachout supporters as “college progressives”, I admire what they were able to accomplish. Thirty-five percent in a primary against a powerful incumbent is pretty impressive.
Full disclosure: I am a New York Democrat and I don’t like how Cuomo’s running our state. I am not alone.
that line is hilarious
In fact the service team found his brain to be in PERFECT condition — it had never been used.
We can debate (at great length) definitions of “progressivism” and who qualifies as a “progressive” vote and who doesn’t.
But when African-Americans have for nearly two generations now cast 80% or more of their votes for candidates from the center-left party in a nation that has only two major political parties, then it’s hard to build a serious case for those voters not being “progressive”.
Did Teachout campaign in Black/Latino neighborhoods? If she didn’t, then her numbers make sense. What kind of campaign did she run? There have to be practical considerations as well. They may have heard her and thought she couldn’t win the general election. Cuomo is an incumbent as well.
According to comments from New York state residents on some other blogs, Teachout’s campaign was poorly organized and vastly underfunded. Lack of funds alone would be fatal to the aspirations of a political outsider facing an incumbent with high name recognition.
Little money (no figures yet on how much Teachout raised and spent on her campaign but Cuomo had $30 million in his coffers and apparently spent heavily in the past few weeks) and she only entered the race a few months ago. (Cuomo probably had his re-election team up and running a year ago.)
I think this thread got off on the wrong foot.
This article about the meaning of this primary gives a far more accurate picture than Booman’s post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/the-importance-of-zephyr_b_5785104.html
Zephyr Teachout never expected to win, she wanted to make a point. And she’s made it.
And while everybody’s talking about Teachout, there’s also Tim Wu, who is really the bigger threat (to Cathy Hochul).
By her own final poll, Teachout expected 26%. She GOT 35%.
http://www.msnbc.com/steve-kornacki/zephyr-teachout-likely-wont-exceed-expectations-polls
“Poorly organized” and “underfunded” against an incumbent with a thirty million war chest.
Yes, with all respect (I was very happy to vote for Teachout and Wu) it was a bit of a hipster campaign, and I think a lot more online than out retail campaigning–I didn’t see them in the usual leafleting spots in cosmopolitan neighborhoods, and I imagine they visited minority concentration areas even less.
The credit for this comment goes to Matt Browner Hamlin(who Boo should know, from Twitter at least):
Zephyr Teachout got over 180,000 votes last night. The minimum threshold for a party to retain their ballot line in New York’s fusion system is 50,000 votes. It’s worth remembering that this threshold was used as an argument against WFP endorsing Zephyr – that they might not get the 50,000 votes and could lose their line. Yet she blew it away with almost no money, no TV, no mail, and essentially no institutional support.
Teachout/Wu spent $500K tops. Cuomo spent over $10 million, and maybe even closer to $15 million. So think about what Teachout/Wu accomplished given the above comment.
Exactly.
I don’t mean to diminish their personal achievement. Really furious all over again with WFP, though, thinking about what could have been.
When President Obama leaves office, he will be the guy who prevented a depression, rescued the entire auto industry, passed student loan reform, credit card reform, financial reform, healthcare reform, and essentially climate change reform. We have a financial consumer protection bureau, and will have a health care system providing healthcare to an additional 40 million people. And oh yeah, he also repealed “Don’t ask, Don’t tell”, came out in favor of marriage equality, banned torture, and is set to do a form of immigration reform on his own.
He took out Bin Laden, took out Gaddafi, decimated Al Qaeda,ended the Iraq war, is ending the Afghanistan war, and unlike the last dude in the White House who got us stuck in Iraq for a decade to get WMD that didn’t exist, Obama got Syria’s ACTUAL WMD without a shot being fired.
The DOW has tripled in value, the deficit has been cut in half, and we are on a pace for the best jobs numbers since 1999. Obama has now broken Clinton’s all time record for the most consecutive months of private sector job growth at 53, and is still going.
This doesn’t even include lesser discussed things like the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill, a complete overhaul of our food safety laws, the largest land conservation bill in a quarter of a century, and the NEW START treaty.
Yet listening to people speak of this president is like listening in on a baseball conversation where the player in question has been averaging .330, with 30 home runs and 120 RBIs for the last 5 seasons yet instead of discussing a possible MVP award they say he doesn’t even belong in the majors.
And why don’t people like Michael Moore ever take the standard they apply to Obama and apply it to the white presidents (like FDR & Johnson) as well.
FDR’s signature accomplishment, Social Security, in it’s original form was a watered down racist piece of legislation. And this was with a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and an INSANE majority in the House. It provided no benefits to domestic and agricultural workers (meaning blacks and latinos got nothing), no benefits to government employees, nothing for survivors and their dependents,nothing for railroad employees or the self employed, had no cost of living adjustment, and had very meager benefits. He refused to do health care reform at all, embraced austerity throwing us back into a recession, put Japanese Americans in internment camps, and firebombed Tokyo. Does Michael Moore hate FDR for not getting a public option? Or for his whole New Deal excluding minorities from benefiting? Somehow it’s only the black president that this level of purity is demanded from.
Why doesn’t Michael Moore or other Liberals ever complain about what a pussy LBJ was? He took a total pass on single payer. His majorities included a 68-32 majority in the Senate and a 295-140 majority in the House. And with that, the supposedly tough LBJ took a total pass on national single payer and instead passed two VERY watered down programs.
A program for the old in Medicare which in it’s original form didn’t even cover the cost of one’s medicine, nor any home health services, or disabilities. And Medicaid, which originally did not even cover adults. Just poor children and their primary care givers.
And that was it, a program for the old that didn’t cover basics like medicine, a program for just poor kids, and NOTHING for anyone in the middle. Somehow I never hear Michael Moore complain about LBJ. Just how the black President should be more like the one, who with those majorities, underperformed.
I mean seriously, to say what Michael Moore said, you have to have some major racial issues yourself. And I continue to find it amazing how even supposed Liberals have totally different standards for what constitutes success as they apply to white presidents vs black presidents.
And why don’t people like Michael Moore ever take the standard they apply to Obama and apply it to the white presidents (like FDR & Johnson) as well.
Probably because FDR and LBJ have the benefit of looking better by contrast with 40 years of conservative ascendancy and existing before Internet 2.0 and the marriage of science and liberalism?
That’s not racism, it’s just nostalgia and hagiography working its usual magic. People who say the Princess and the Frog is modern teenybopper soulless Disney garbage but Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are classic awesome Disney at its height — despite TPatF being by any measure much better than the latter — probably say so because of nostalgia, not racism. Don’t get me wrong, Obama is underrated by modern leftists (so far, he’s better than FDR at least), but blaming that because of racism puts you in the same category as this Michael Moore fellow.
IMO Michael Moore and a lot of other people are jumping the gun on the judgement of history in a misguided attempt to try to pressure the President into more progressive policies.
The fact is that there are 28 more months in this Presidency before history has a chance to pass judgement. And from what we have seen in the President’s campaigns, the late stages are by far the most important to getting something done.
The other fact is that few Presidents since Lincoln or FDR have had more simultaneous challenges to deal with, and none since Thomas Jefferson have had as vicious a political climate to work with.
Not going to dispute that it wasn’t color blind, but as a program, it allowed for modifications to make it less so and over the decades has benefited tens of million os people of color. The impediment then is still with us today as the successors to racists of the 1930’s continue to engage in voter disenfranchisement and oppose all safety net programs.
However, what I did want to dispute is that to say Social Security was FDR’s signature accomplishment suggests that you aren’t well informed of the New Deal legislation. The financial regulations and programs such as Fannie Mae put in place worked for fifty years until the GOP and neo-liberal Democrats began chipping away at them. Then there was the FLSA: 8 hour work day and 40 hour work week, minimum wage, time and a half for overtime, and restrictions on child labor. Unemployment compensation. Crop insurance. Food stamps. The list is very long. Check it out some time.
Not going to dispute that it wasn’t color blind, but as a program, it allowed for modifications to make it less so and over the decades has benefited tens of million os people of color.
So how come Social Security is the first brave salvo in the long battle for financial security for seniors but the ACA is a worthless conservative sell-out that isn’t going anywhere?
The Social Security model is simple and exclusively federal. There was no structural impediment to adding the workers that it originally didn’t include.
Also keep in mind that the 1935 Social Security Act was amended in 1939 to add spouse’s to the covered worker’s retirement benefit, and widows and children of a deceased worker, and disability benefits for workers.
All payroll taxes collected for the programs flow to the federal government and all benefits are paid by the fed to the individuals.
State governments don’t collect or distribute any funds and individuals don’t have to choose from a variety of different offers from private companies.
it was a racist piece of legislation and because of it’s design, it affects the checks of Black Seniors TODAY…because THEY WERE CHEATED OUT OF YEARS OF CONTRIBUTIONS…
let’s be clear…
THEIR CHECKS ARE SMALLER THAN THEY SHOULD BE TODAY BECAUSE OF FDR’S CONCESSIONS TO THE RACIST SOUTHERN DEMOCRATS.
and this is whole swaths of the Black Senior Community.
Didn’t dispute that. And that was wrong. But Lincoln didn’t deliver “forty acres and mule” either. And that too was wrong and robbed African-Americans of compensation for past work and a future in which to build wealth. Of those two failures, from imperfect men, the lack of post Civil War reparations for African Americans may have had the longer term impact on impoverishment of African-Americans than SSI original shortcomings. It wasn’t exclusive to African-Americans and there are plenty of white single women today that worked very low wage jobs and struggle as seniors. So, what can we do about that today? Raise benefits. And who is promoting that? This might hurt you a bit, but the truth is always better:
The advocates?
I’d love to work and vote for Sherrod Brown for POTUS. But that’s not going to happen because too many Democrats and liberals prefer the neoliberalcons.
So how is Obama’s “incremental centrism” different from Roosevelt’s “incremental centrism”?
Architecture. Adding additional classes of workers to SSI presented no difficulty. Nor did adding a COLA benefits calculation. Nor did establishing a pre-paid trust fund for the Baby Boomer retirement bubble. (It’s the management of the money that has flowed into the trust fund that’s been dreadful. Used as a piggy-bank to cut taxes on corporations and high income individuals.)
Not that I’m a fan of “incremental centrism” when doing the right thing from the get-go is remotely feasible. LBJ had to settle for national health insurance for seniors and eligible disabled individuals instead of Medicare for All. (What he didn’t do was exclude anyone based on race or gender. And hospitals, particularly in the south were outraged that they had to serve the entire community and couldn’t discriminate based on race.) There is no architectural impediment moving from here to Medicare for All which LBJ’s team expected would be realized sooner rather than later. It would also do away with the need for Medicaid except perhaps the long-term care provision.
Exactly how the hell are those twenty-five million left out after the PPACA going to be added in the future? What happens when the price tag exceeds the projections? What happens when states have to absorb a portion of the costs for expanded Medicaid? There was already a severe shortage of primary care physicians and nurse practitioners — and only the most modest effort to alleviate that was included. Was the significant insurance company pre-authorization for services and billing paperwork burden for physicians and hospitals reduced? Any significant control of medical devices, etc. costs?
Thanks for your response.
To answer some of your questions:
1 – Not to be flip, but the uninsured will be added in the future the same way they have in the past: when Democrats control the federal government and there’s a sustained effort to make the issue a priority from their base.
2 – There’s no reason to assume the ACA’s “price tag (will exceed) the projections when all the evidence so far is that it is working as expected to reduce health care inflation.
3 – The ACA provides for a 90/10 federal/state cost coverage for the Medicaid expansion (as compared with the 50/50 split for traditional Medicaid). Purely on economic grounds, it’s a bargain for states.
4 – One entire section of the ACA deals with workforce issues, providing incentives and changes for the education, training and retention not only for primary care doctors and nurses, but also for other front-line health care workers.
5 – The push for electronic medical records is, among other things, aimed at reducing paperwork.
6 – Again, the ACA contains numerous cost control provisions (including one that allows for the implementation of cost control measures that the drafters didn’t think of); and the early evidence over the past four years is that at least some of those measures are working effectively.
The core of the PPACA has only been in existence for eight months. To evaluate its performance to date is way too premature. Consider the 1998 repeal of Glass-Steagall. That kick started an expansion of private investor mortgage credit arrangements. Investors were happy with the returns, the stock brokers got rich, the banks, real estate and mortgage brokers did well, a housing construction boom ensued and builders were sitting pretty, and more individuals could buy houses and/or pull cash out of their houses and spend it. In the short-term, mortgage interest rates declined and other than worry warts like me, not many were concerned about the rapid inflation for real estate prices. What didn’t change were the fundamentals of home ownership cost to income and the former was escalating while the latter was stagnant. How did that work out? In the aggregate, far more decent and stable housing to fill the shortage could have been had for a fraction of the debt incurred by the federal government to prop up the bankrupt financial institutions that this boneheaded deregulation created.
Consider an analogy. (Ignore that it’s not perfect and focus on the system architecture.) Say eighty percent of Americans owned private passenger vehicles and twenty percent used public transportation. The rightwing hates public transport and rails that it isn’t self supporting. (As if there are no public dollars involved in the driving our cars.) Now not all of that eighty percent are happy. Many struggle to keep an old junker going. Some dream of more than a serviceable vehicle. Some drive company owned vehicles that they couldn’t afford on their own. The twenty percent dream of the convenience of owning a car. Would it be rational to junk public transit, set a minimum standard for a serviceable vehicle that would be federally subsidized for those couldn’t afford the monthly payments (up to 100% for the poorest). Those with more money could buy enhanced vehicles for the same price or a bit more. Oh, and we’ll increase the road capacity by 5% and impose some insurance, repair, tolls, and gasoline price controls.
Health insurance deductibles and co-pays are like the daily operating costs of vehicles. Those operating costs would also be zero for those at the 100% subsidy level. Except not all of the poorest qualified for a free car. And bicycle riders are forced to join the automobile owners club. (Slightly silly but just go with it as a new required out-of-pocket expense for such people.)
Now say that in transferring the public cost of public transportation (plus a new tax on luxury vehicles) is the same as subsidizing 10% more cars and upgrading another 30% of the preexisting automobiles. All’s well, right? Except for those that are now walking, but we’ll get around to them later — and in the meantime they can thumb a ride, buy a bicycle, or hail a cab. Not all those in their subsidized upgrades are going to be able to afford the annual out-of-pocket costs if they ended up with a lemon. They can’t downgrade because economy subcompacts no longer exist. Public transit doesn’t exist. And they aren’t poor enough to get an increased government subsidy.
Why does England have UHC, everybody covered, little to no individual out-of-pocket costs, no personal bankruptcy for medical costs at an aggregate cost of half that of the US? (With a larger senior population as well.) Not a difficult question.
In the US, we’ve been kicking the foundations out of the public healthcare providers for decades. First, it only cost individual Medicare beneficiaries a little bit more to use private instead of public services. Those with the means went private. Twenty years ago Medicaid beneficiaries were given the same option and private providers with capacity were happy to take a portion of those patients. Now public hospitals have lost their federal subsidy and must compete directly with the private providers that will take the healthiest and leave the sickest, largest portion of the uninsured, and poorest Medicare up to the public providers. (The recent significant increase in enrollment at VA hospitals (and the reason why many are struggling to keep up) is likely a result of the PPACA changes for a certain number of beneficiaries — either cost or access.)
Now we are already seeing smaller and more rural hospitals shuttered. If not for Bernie Sanders insistence that the funding for private, non-profit clinics be increased under the PPACA, that lower cost option would also be in dire straights. The states that have rejected expanded Medicaid and additional abortion restrictions are destroying the Planned Parenthood low-cost clinic option. That will put more women giving birth in higher cost private hospitals under the emergency Medicaid provisions (but those women will still have less, or even lesser, access to quality prenatal care.
How anyone can view all these moving parts and come away believing that aggregate US health care costs (18% of GDP) will decline with more privatization, more private health insurance (Medicare Plan D and private administration of Medicaid) and a growing senior population is frankly mind boggling to me.
btw — progressives were yelling and screaming throughout FDR’s and LBJ’s tenure. Their noise led to more progressive legislation than it would otherwise have been. Not as good as they asked for but either close or the difference was split in half. The PPACA was a GOP think tank program that was inaugurated by Romney in MA. If that’s what you wanted, would have been easier and faster to get if you’d supported Romney in 2008.
The standards for today’s true progressives aren’t different than they were in FDR’s or LBJ’s time. You just weren’t around to hear it, but there were many like you back then complaining about what progressives demanded.
The problem isn’t what progressives demand.
The political and racial problem is the absolute invisibility of any public support for what the POTUS has actually acheived. Every now and again Joe Biden or Harry Reid will compliment the President’s efforts but Obama has opened negoiations with Iran, got them to turn over their enriched uranium, and has already routed ISIL’s leadership from Mosul – without anybody rushing to the mic to let the American people know.
They can’t tout the president’s policies because most Democrats are running to the mic to call him passive, too cautious, and otherwise joining the GOTP in wondering whether he’s really even competent. It seems their public default position is to critize Obama. Schweitzer, Clinton, and O’Malley – all potential Democratic 2016 candidates – have all taken gratuitous, coalition-busting shots at Obama.
That public lack of support and back-biting is a big assist to the Kochs and the radical GOTP. I’m sure the Koch brothers smile as Democrats refuse to defend this president by, among other things, being mute about the still untouted benefits the ACA brings to every American with insurance or by failing to call out the GOTP fearmongering by simply informing the public about the ragtag retreat ISIL commenced weeks ago. I’ve never even heard the WH spokesperson vigorously defend the president’s record.
There is a double standard in place here. Obama seems very isolated no matter what he does domestically or internationally. I’ve never seen any president so obviously and publicly left to fend for himself by his own party. No matter Clinton’s crass sexual behavior, he always had very public Democratic defenders; some were relutant defenders but they were still defenders. Not so with Obama and many wonder why that is.
This is a good observation. It is the Congressional Democrats who have been more of a problem in getting the President’s accomplishments before the public than the folks like Michael Moore, who have little influence outside one segment of the white progressive movement.
But in some cases, the President’s accomplishments have been overshadowed by the actions of members of his own executive team. The opening to Iran was undercut by Hillary Clinton posturing as tough on foreign diplomacy. The disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons was undercut by Victoria Nuland’s using a coup in Ukraine to antagonize Putin, who was a key player in having that agreement come about.
Nonetheless the ones who have been the worst team players have been the Congressional Democrats and state Democratic politicians who, how can I put this delicately, don’t want to be seen standing by a black man more powerful than they are.
All this “the progressives aren’t giving him credit” static obscures the failure of the Democratic establishment to get his back.
Who will be the first pundit to look at this racial divide and blame it on black voters being low information voters choosing mainly based on name recognition?
Come on, man, this was a very-low turnout state primary.
Progressive divide?
What the Cuomo result shows is that the New York City organization that de Blasio built to win as mayor can be put to work for Cuomo. Now figure the calculus that made de Blasio make that decision.
It is also worth considering which upstate counties Teachout and Wu had strength in. And which way the sububan ring counties around NYC swung.
Reading a racial divide into the results of a low-turnout election I believe goes too far. It seems that New Yorkers have a high tolerance for corruption and that New York Democrats have a high tolerance for turncoat Democrats.
Common wisdom ignores the fact that it takes the development of a political machine in order to win political office in a large city. And that discipline within the machine is what allows big city mayors to govern. At the same time that same discipline encourage a patronage spoils system and a system of political corruption. In states without large cities or with competing cities, it is the state level that develops the political machine that turns out voters. In a lot of states that machine is identical to the political party establishment of the continually winning party.
Ignoring the institutional infrastructure by which incumbents remain incumbents is one of the big failings of progressive voters and challengers. They think they can build a movement in two months before an election that creates a wave that sweeps them into office. Very often that wave is limited to university towns and neighborhoods.
And then there’s the issue that most white progressives have the attitude that the black community should automatically align with them just because they are progressive. This was one of the continuing struggles within the Occupy movement and was only beginning to be handled when the authorities forcibly shut down the encampments. There must be some policy there there for minority voters to get motivated. Cuomo’s turncoatism was not sufficient apparently, especially with deBlasio endorsing Cuomo.
Result. DeBlasio shows he’s a team player. Cuomo can kiss hopes of national office good-bye. Teachout and Wu are positioned to come back with sharper political skills and if they understand the need for an active and equal alliance with minority communities might come back stronger. One obvious primary would be to go up against Chuck Schumer in 2016 on the basis of his coziness with Wall Street. That would be a tough fight, but with adequate preparation could be a signal fight for the soul of the Democratic Party.
At some point the “We are the 99%” message has to get into the electoral part of the political culture in an effective way. Reverend William Barber and the Moral Monday Movement is working to make that happen in Southern states. A working alliance between the Teachout/Wu constituency and a NY Moral Monday movement in Albany to press the wayward NY Democrats in the Assembly could bridge whatever racial divide might exist in this election.
IMO, it’s more a matter of the DeBlasio endorsement turning out the boroughs for Cuomo than any racial issue.
Of more importance right now to me is the Georgia Democratic candidates’ strategy of seeking 50 Presidential-to-midterm falloff voters per precinct to canvass in their GOTV efforts. If that were done nationwide by this November, it would mobilize close to 21 million voters as a target. That could turn low turnout into a wave. The secret here is that Democrats have much more turnout to get than Republicans even if Republicans duplicated this tactic.
If and when progressives stop fixating on Presidents and start thinking about precincts, they might start winning.
A point well taken. Cuomo had incumbency, an apparatus, campaigning experience, and a relative shit-ton of money. Ascribing his victory to factors much beyond those just mentioned seems to me to be taking a ride on one’s own ideological hobbyhorse.
That’s all true too. After my second robocall from de Blasio I was almost ready to vote for Cuomo myself. I was able to resist the impulse, but it was a near thing for a moment.
Marie is probably right that the machine had it won for Cuomo. I have to wonder what de Blasio secured in exchange for his support though. I thought Cuomo basically put a stop to his more progressive ambitions for NYC.
Charlie Cook:
When you don’t deliver for Democrats, what does the Congressional Democratic caucus expect? The national establishment has essentially written off the possibility of recreating party infrastructures in a lot of red states and have allowed too much turncoat Democratic behavior. From the New York Assembly to the “Ooops” Democratic vote that delivered fracking to North Carolina. Too much betrayal from the establishment. And now they’ve been sitting on their hands and losing the Senate provides the perfect excuse for the lame duckiness of Obama’s last two years. From Baucus and Bayh to Schumer to Menendez to…what a bunch of sellouts.
Nobody is addressing turnout here, which was “low” (I can’t find any actual numbers yet). Which I’m guessing means even lower in the African American community, as in Ferguson MO.
In my state senate district the incumbent Adriano Espaillat, known for trying and failing twice to hound Harlem’s Charlie Rangel out of Congress and compiling the worst attendance record in the senate’s history, beat out a hero of the black community, former councilman Robert Jackson. Espaillat had the backing of the progressive establishment (Nadler, de Blasio, etc.), as did Cuomo, and plenty of money, but I’ll bet low black turnout in a midterm ends up being the crucial factor.
By the same token it would more likely be turnout rather than any black enthusiasm for Cuomo that accounts for Cuomo’s better results in urban districts.
Under your theory, white people in the Bronx voted at much higher level than blacks and Latinos? So, the more blacks and Latinos in a borough, the better Cuomo did?
It’s kind of hard to figure out how that works.
And what about the Hipster capital of the world, Brooklyn. If that’s the Teachout/Wu stronghold, shouldn’t they have done better there than Staten Island? It was basically the same result in both boroughs, but Staten Island Democrats are a much different demographic with much more conservative sensibilities.
For me, the key comes from those numbers in The Bronx. I think the Bronx is the second most progressive borough with the least tension (e.g. pro-Israel) with white progressivism. It should not have gone 81% to Cuomo. Brooklyn is De Blasio’s turf, and yet it underperformed The Bronx by a lot.
No, my “theory” isn’t that assertive. It’s that black voters just didn’t play as big a role as you suggest. White people in the Bronx and Queens and parts of Brooklyn are a lot more conservative than in Manhattan (I think the number of hipsters who actually vote is a pretty small proportion of Brooklyn’s two and a half million inhabitants, whatever the NYT style section may imagine; the concentration of white progressives is up the Hudson valley and in the Finger Lakes, as in the map of these results). Another Senate case is that of John Liu losing to turncoat Tony Avella in Queens; poor Asian turnout is likely a significant part of the reason.
As to de Blasio, he was out arguing that Cuomo is a progressive and urging everybody to vote for him and the other establishment candidates. He has a good bit of pull among black voters too, which could be a factor on your side of the question. If there’s a trend of the kind you suggest it’s not exclusively black but pragmatic, and unifying rather than dividing, and I hope it’s true (though I don’t much like Cuomo benefiting from it).
No, it doesn’t.
People who live in cities have different needs and priorities than people who live in suburbs. Why do they have to prefer the same candidates? This doesn’t demonstrate a “racial divide”, or anything that better communication between white and non-white coalitions could have changed.
In all likelihood the difference had more to do with Teachout’s lack of name recognition, which stood at about 12% statewide just a few weeks ago. Given the tiny amount of campaign cash she had, she did a very impressive job against an established sitting governor.