In a sane world, this diary should not exist. In a world where the Democratic Party stood with its supporters on their values against the coming storm, there would be no need to write this.
But in a world where a corrupt windbag is recycled like a creation of Dr. Frankenstein for no explainable reason other than to prevent those same progressive values from being anywhere near political power, it needs to be said.
The most well known Democratic candidate for mayor of New York, who assaulted at least eleven women, is running to be New York’s voice to stand against Donald Trump, who has assaulted at least twenty women. Andrew Cuomo, who used government employees to write a book about his leadership, is promising to resist Donald Trump, whose list of personal grifts using government property and personnel is far too extensive to link here. Andrew Cuomo, who shares donors with Trump and is influenced by the same people, is promising to resist him.
Andrew Cuomo is the end of a long joke that stopped being funny years ago, and no amount of endorsements from political figures will change that. There are multiple candidates in the primary for New York City's mayor. There are multiple people, who have a pulse and sit further to the left, who would be such an improvement over Cuomo that an alien observer would conclude humans had made a leap in evolution. And yet the same party that tried to force one of its vice chairs to sign a neutrality clause and stay out of primaries is throwing its entire weight on the scale of this race. The same party that would force union representation out of the DNC because they supported the current chair's progressive opponent would rather a sexual assaulter have a seat at the table than a progressive and is fighting someone they see as a progressive in the most bitter opposition to anything we've seen this year.
And it's not opposition toTrump himself.
Not opposition to the ICE agents that tear children from their mothers.
Not opposition to the constant wars that start under Republican leadership and never end.
Not opposition to the budget that seeks to turn the power of the purse into a whip to use against the American people.
But bitter opposition to progressives in a race that is, like all elections in this time, about ending the terror we are in and rebuilding our society. There is no justification for ignoring all of this while embracing the weakest and most corrupt leader still alive and cognizant of their surroundings that the donor class can drag out of suspended animation.
I do not live in New York and can't say I know a great deal about the other candidates. I know Mamdami is a front-runner on the left who has a decent chance of winning this primary. I understand he's not perfect; no one who calls themselves a socialist without reckoning with that ideology’s own prejudices and mistakes from the last century is. But it seems clear he knows the city, and it's obvious he's a human being who cares about other humans and believes sexual assault should remain a crime. In a race against a corrupt, irrelevant, groping fossil like Cuomo, that should be enough.
There are those in the party who have endorsed Cuomo. For the rest of us, who still have principles, it's time to send his ass to assisted living so we can move on to fixing the mess he contributed to.
