{"id":9779,"date":"2013-07-15T09:37:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-15T13:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=9779"},"modified":"2013-07-15T09:37:13","modified_gmt":"2013-07-15T13:37:13","slug":"how-cuomo-resembles-bill-clinton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2013\/07\/15\/how-cuomo-resembles-bill-clinton\/","title":{"rendered":"How Cuomo resembles (Bill) Clinton"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Is<\/a>

Is this the new face of New York’s Democratic Party? (Photo: Wikipedia)<\/p><\/div>\n

When Bill Clinton rose to power in the 1990s, he went a long way toward re-inventing the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

His “third way” style of politics dragged Democrats back to the center, discarding much of the 1960s and 1970s-era rhetoric.<\/p>\n

Clinton was tough on crime, he pushed for welfare reform, he balanced the Federal budget, and spoke harshly of “big government.”<\/p>\n

It worked, in large measure.<\/p>\n

Progressives were uncomfortable with Clinton’s rightward shift, but he positioned Democrats to win a plurality of the popular vote in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008 and 2012.<\/p>\n

There is a less successful side to Clinton’s political legacy, however, and that was his impact on the organization of the Democratic Party itself.<\/p>\n

Even as Clinton was building his own brand, the internal strength of the Democratic Party was weakening, eroding, and in some parts of the US collapsing.<\/p>\n

Democrats have seen major setbacks in state-level and congressional races in many parts of the US.\u00a0 By 1994, Democrats had lose control of the US House.\u00a0\u00a0 With the exception of a few short periods, they have remained in the minority ever since.<\/p>\n

It took major opposition to George W. Bush, the rise of Barack Obama, and Howard Dean’s “fifty state strategy” to begin reviving the Democratic Party’s institutional mojo.<\/p>\n

I recount this story because I wonder if there’s not an important analogue here to the political fortunes of Governor Andrew Cuomo.<\/p>\n

Cuomo is a third-way Democrat, a tax-cutter who bucks public employee unions.\u00a0 He’s partnered frequently with Republicans to pass major legislation, including the assault rifle ban and the property tax cap.<\/p>\n

But while Cuomo has navigated a series of triumphs, his party has foundered, caught up in waves of corruption and arrests, and suffering bitter setbacks in state Senate races.<\/p>\n

Now, Democrats are treated to the further spectacle of the return — in a single election year — of disgraced Democrats Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer.<\/p>\n

In the political party vacuum that Cuomo helped to create, those two men have become, almost by default, the new faces of New York’s Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

I say that Cuomo helped create the vacuum because he has declined to play an active role in reforming the political party which he serves as standard bearer.<\/p>\n

He has played a limited role in campaigning for Democrats and done almost nothing to heal the risky divide between white Democratic state Senators and their counterparts in the black and Hispanic delegation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This drift within his own party could haunt Cuomo if he makes a bid for the white house in 2016.\u00a0 The on-line magazine Politico<\/a> addressed Cuomo’s conundrum in an article this week.<\/p>\n

The biggest roadblock to Cuomo\u2019s presidential ambitions remains Hillary Clinton. But if he does run, the core of his argument would be that he\u2019s the guy who got an out-of-control state back in order. That\u2019s already been threatened by an explosion of state government political corruption revelations.<\/p>\n

Add Spitzer \u2014 whose history of bad blood with the governor is the stuff of Albany legend \u2014 and Weiner into the mix, and Cuomo by 2016 could end up looking less wrangler, more ringmaster.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The bottom line is that the most transformative American politicians — Roosevelt and Reagan come to mind — boost their political parties at the same time they are advancing their own ideas and political fortunes.<\/p>\n

Clinton, arguably, failed to do that and it cost Democrats in ways that still impact our public culture.<\/p>\n

As Cuomo plots his trajectory the next couple of years, it remains to be seen whether his state party will follow his ascent or be left behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Bill Clinton rose to power in the 1990s, he went a long way toward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9779"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9782,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779\/revisions\/9782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}