Cuomo, Franken, And Defending Dangerous Democrats

Stop Reflexively Defending Democrats

Andrew Cuomo needs to resign as Governor of New York, and I'm not really willing to argue about this with anybody at this point. Any call for an investigation is in effect a call for his resignation - or a process that will claim that the half dozen women who have claimed sexual harassment from Cuomo did not suffer abuse they claim they did. Their allegations are all credible, the details specific, and their pain clear. Yes, the rule of law protects innocence until proven guilty, but I'm not bound by that in making a determination of fitness for high office. He needs to resign.

Will he? I have no idea. I'm not a tea-leaf reader, or well versed in New York politics. But there is a tendency amongst some people - mostly Resistance liberals who decided they liked Cuomo as a way to show Trump up during the pandemic - to defend, deflect, downplay, or deny the allegations against him. And that, more than anything, has me livid. Some Democrats have made Al Franken a martyr, and are seeking to do the same to Andrew Cuomo. Here's a tip: don't.

Andrew Cuomo has sexually harassed his staff, young women whom he had a position of power over, and whom he could not reasonably be told no by. Imagine how difficult it would be to tell the Governor of America's fourth largest state No about anything, then imagine you work for the guy and you'd like to continue to work for him. No is a word in your lexicon but out of your reach when you're working at the will of a man with absolute discretion in your career. Get a good recommendation from Cuomo, and I'm sure you can write your ticket in Democratic politics for a while. Without that, your path could become fraught and difficult.

What defending Cuomo or Franken is isn't just an act of choosing to dismiss the concerns of those victims, but it is a broader signal of what will be excused and forgiven in the name of politics and electoral success. If you're willing to defend this behaviour when there is no electoral consequence - sexual harassment of staff by Cuomo, inappropriate sexual contact by Franken - then there is no limits to what you'll defend moving forward.

If you think this is a theoretical risk, don't. Remind yourself about just how precarious the advancements of gay Americans have been and try and tell me not to worry about supposed liberals willing to throw anything or anybody under the bus to protect themselves. "Oh, it'll never come to that," I can hear people saying, as if I'm living blind to the fact that the GOP have been trying to make anti-trans issues a national debate for the last three months, and it is not, unfortunately, being hit with national ridicule. Support for gay marriage came fast, and it could, in theory, go away just as fast.

What happens when a red state Democratic Governor needs a polling boost and goes to the button marked "homophobia" in pursuit of it? The chorus of Cuomo defenders think that telling women to, in effect, sit down and shut up, is an acceptable answer because Cuomo is, somehow, good. He isn't, but even if he were, this isn't acceptable. By defending dangerous men, you're just giving license for worse and worse behaviour until you're just defending the actions of Donald Trump because, well, he has the right latter beside his name. Plainly, that's unacceptable, and yet, it's the glide path we're on if we cannot even all rally to the idea that Andrew Cuomo isn't fit for office.

I have hopes that Cuomo will not be long in office - even if he doesn't resign, I cannot see him running again, and even if he does, he will lose a primary - but this isn't about getting rid of a singular evil man from office, but riding the broader Democratic Party of a culture that enables this kind of bad behaviour. If this is the acceptable price to pay for a Democratic Governor of a Biden +20 state, then don't be surprised by everyone else in similarly safe states reading the lesson that sexual harassment and endangering your staffs is okay if you're in a blue enough state. And, don't be surprised when politicians who don't have that electoral cushion read that partisanship will constrain their voters from voting against you, and enabling a potentially disastrous policy vision.

I generally avoid discussions of morality here, because your morally unacceptable dereliction of duty could be my necessary compromise to achieve a fair aim, I get that. But this shit isn't hard. Stop defending dangerous Democrats just because you liked them before you found out they were dangerous. There needs to be some sanction for bad behaviour in public life, and this starts with everyone accepting that Andrew Cuomo must go.