New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is the latest target of yet another fraudulent sex scandal, which has become the weapon of choice used by the Democratic Party in the execution of its increasingly frequent political hit jobs.
One is best advised to ignore the moral posturing of the sundry New York Democrats. This is a knife fight between competing factions of the corrupt New York Democratic Party machine. In this fight, the opponents of Cuomo are, to a great extent, motivated by calculations of career and political expediency. At this stage, the deeper issues that are driving the conflict are not yet fully known. But there can be little doubt that issues of concern to powerful political interests are involved.
At the center of the manufactured sex scandal is, once again, the filthy New York Times. Its editor, Dean Baquet, endlessly sniffing for sin and soliciting stories of unwanted advances, inappropriate leers, and, with a bout of luck, an allegation of a career-destroying grope, has unleashed his newsroom bloodhounds against Cuomo. The father of yellow journalism, William Randolph Hearst, famously told his photographers as he campaigned for a military confrontation with Spain, “You provide the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” The motto of Baquet is: “I’ll dredge up the allegations and then manufacture the scandal.”
Its latest installment in the unrelenting campaign against Cuomo is an article by Shane Goldmacher, published Sunday, titled “The Imperious Rise and Accelerating Fall of Andrew Cuomo.” Focused on proving that Cuomo is widely hated, the Times unintentionally exposes the fact that the sex scandal is a pretext for settling scores and advancing other as yet unstated agendas. The article includes no actual facts proving Cuomo’s alleged behavior. It is, instead, comprised entirely of vindictive personal denunciations of Cuomo.
One has the impression that the Times has made use of robocalls to contact whoever may have worked for or had some sort of contact with Cuomo during the past decade. All those who had, in one way or another, been offended, insulted, neglected, and, as is known to happen in the nasty world of bourgeois politics, double-crossed were given the opportunity to pour out their hearts into Goldmacher’s cell phone recorder.
All the pent-up anger that Goldmacher managed to extract forms the basis of his take-down of Cuomo. He denounces Cuomo as an “ambitious,” “image-obsessed politician,” whose governorship is a “reign of ruthlessness and governance by brute force.” He is “Icarus-like,” “bullying,” “unwilling to share the spotlight,” makes “unrelenting and mercurial demands,” “intimidating,” “toxic,” “abusive,” requires an “intoxicating amount of attention,” is “convinced of his own hype and indestructability,” has “disdain for fellow Democrats,” an “imperious demeanor,” a “domineering approach” and “strong-arms legislators and anyone else who dared cross him.”
Former lieutenant governor and austerity proponent Richard Ravitch is quoted as saying, “He’s not a nice person and he doesn’t have any real friends.” Ravitch, who is something of a Democratic Party intellectual, added sagely: “If you don’t have a base of support and you get into trouble, you’re dead meat.”
However, the claim that this accounts for Cuomo’s undoing is contradicted by the fate of Senator Al Franken. He was, by all accounts, both sweet and funny, but that did not save him from becoming, as Ravitch might have said, “road kill.”
In any case, none of what the Times describes is legally impeachable behavior, leading the reader inescapably to the conclusion that much deeper issues must be involved.
While the actual motivations behind the sudden calls for Cuomo to resign are not entirely clear, there is good reason to believe that a real political scandal, with genuinely criminal implications, looms in the background. New York State and City Democratic Party officials may be seeking to pin the entire blame for the deepening nursing home scandal on Cuomo alone and distract attention from the political and legal liability of the state government as a whole.
This is a massive social crime that threatens to engulf the entire state in investigations of both a civil and criminal character. In 2020, the state ordered COVID-19-positive elderly and mentally disabled people into nursing homes and state homes, and then falsified the total number of people who died. Some 9,000 elderly people and 552 mentally disabled people died as a result of the policy.
There is no comparison between the impact of this scandal, which encapsulates the criminal policy of the ruling elite toward the pandemic, and the allegations upon which the Times is focused. And yet, the nursing home deaths and coverup are mentioned by the media only as an afterthought to the sex scandal, which serves to distract from the real crimes against the vulnerable and oppressed.
While the state was carrying out the nursing home policy, the Times and the New York media were praising Cuomo, coining the bizarre term “Cuomosexual” and admiring his physical appearance during his press conferences. A potential motivation for pressing Cuomo to resign instead of facing a formal impeachment process is that additional information might surface during impeachment implicating broader sections of the state and media in the nursing home scandal coverup.
Whatever the case may be, on Saturday the Times editorial board published a statement explaining that Cuomo “has lost his political allies and the public’s confidence” and that as a result “it is hard to see how Mr. Cuomo can continue to do the public’s important business.” What a remarkable about face for a newspaper that endorsed Cuomo three times for governor!
Whether Cuomo has “the confidence of the public” is not to be proclaimed by the New York Times editors or Democratic Party courtiers. It is to be decided by the voters in the next election, scheduled for 2022. Forcing his resignation will effectively overturn the results of the 2018 gubernatorial election, in which Cuomo won 3.6 million votes.
If Cuomo is forced out of office, Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul, a former staffer to Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and bank lobbyist, would become governor. She was a vigorous opponent of providing drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants and was described by former congressman Steve Israel as “a right-of-center” Democrat. On Thursday, the New York Times explained she was “fairly conservative,” but touted the “historic” character of the first female governor: “A female chief executive of one of the largest states in the country would most likely feel significant to many New Yorkers.”
There are signs that the Times ’ promotion of sex scandals is wearing thin, even among its own readership. The published comments on the Times coverage are overwhelmingly hostile to efforts to force Cuomo’s resignation.
The development of a leftwing opposition to the Cuomo administration does not need nor make use of sex scandals. His administration presides over massive levels of social inequality, and he has made a career as a loyal pawn of Wall Street. There is a working class, socialist basis for opposing his administration. Socialists must not be swept up by the sex scandal hysterias that only distract from the real motives.