Cuomo Catches Broder Disease

The New York Times' Patrick Healy reports that former governor Mario Cuomo writes a regular memo to friends called "the Update" offering his take on the political scene (sounds like a blog):

The Update reads like a set of talking points for the most serious of policy wonk Cassandras who believe that politicians are ignoring looming threats at the nation’s peril: Iraq, health care, Medicare and Medicaid, the Middle East, global warming, immigration, trade and budget deficits, and so on.

Look, this is preposterous. The Democratic presidential candidates each have a global warming proposal. What's more, they all actually have very similar proposals, featuring different quantitative degrees of ambitiousness in terms of where they want to set the carbon cap in a cap-and-trade system. The issue is simply that as we're seeing with energy legislation currently pending in the congress that the existence of conservative legislators makes it difficult to pass these plans. Similarly, you may not like the Democratic contenders' plans for Iraq (I'm not thrilled myself), but they definitely exist. Nor is anyone ignoring immigration. Indeed, it's been consuming the Senate recently.

Healy remarks that "The memo also reads like it could’ve been written by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City." This is true, but they sound the same because the two of them are basically peddling the same B.S.

Comments

Wasn't Cassandra right?

Posted by tomboy | June 26, 2007 11:57 AM

But Matt, what you're forgetting is that for the these folks the Democratic Party lacks any legitimacy. They don't think it's a "real" political party - only the positions that Republicans take are of any consequence.

Posted by arbitrista | June 26, 2007 12:51 PM

Serious people write serious memos.

Serenity now.

Posted by Rich | June 26, 2007 1:42 PM

I agree about global warming-- get rid of the conservatives in Congress and you could address this.

But on Iraq and health care and gay rights, the problem is the Democrats. Specifically, it is Democrats who are afraid to cut off funding and end the war (even though they could do this at any time a funding bill comes up without needing a veto-proof majority), it is Democrats who are afraid to advocate single payer health care, and it is Democrats who are afraid to fight for gay marriage.

They will continue to be afraid even if we elect a Democratic President. You just wait-- in 2012 at the end of Hillary's term, we will still be in Iraq, we will still have at least 30 million uninsured, and we will still have no federal recognition of gay marriages and no federal laws prohibiting employment and housing discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 26, 2007 2:05 PM

"But on Iraq and health care and gay rights, the problem is the Democrats. Specifically, it is Democrats who are afraid to cut off funding and end the war (even though they could do this at any time a funding bill comes up without needing a veto-proof majority)"

There are currently 49 Democratic Senators. While they might be able to count on Jeffords to side with them, they won't get Lieberman. The 50-50 tie would be broken by Cheyney.

They could just shut down the government, but that is bad. It only takes a single senator abusing the hold provisions to do that.

Posted by Njorl | June 26, 2007 2:31 PM

They ARE ignoring the coming entitlement / budget crisis. And not just the Dems--every pol is ignoring it.

Posted by Claudius | June 26, 2007 2:59 PM

Njorl:

All you need is 40 votes in the Senate to stop the war. Then you just filibuster war spending. Indeed, you don't even have to bring up a bill, so you can actually do it with just the majority leader.

And no government shutdown is necessary. The rest of the government, including DOD, can be funded in other legislation.

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 26, 2007 6:44 PM