POLITICS 2020: A DEMOCRAT LOVE-FEST IN NEW YORK
While life as usual went on in the rest of the world, on Long Island, in the State of New York, the top Democrats in all of America, and the world, for that matter, were there at the New York State Democrat Convention to show their deep and unabiding love not only for each other, but especially for Progressive Democrat Young Andy Cuomo, who received 95% of the vote as challenger Cynthia Nixon was given the cold shoulder by the party, this as they lay the groundwork for their assault on the Washington White House in 2020 with Young Andy Cuomo, who they call “The 21st Century Democrat,” as their presidential standard bearer.
As would be expected, the Democrat “Queen Mum” herself, Hillary Clinton, was there to deliver the keynote address.
America’s “Fighting Bulldog” Joe Biden was also there, to tell the world just how great Young Andy Cuomo really is, after telling everyone how great he is, as well.
And celebrity activist Cynthia Nixon was there to get snubbed.
All in all, a real true star-studded gathering, except for Democrat high-roller and Hillary Clinton campaign donor Harvey Weinstein, who was engaged elsewhere and couldn’t make it.
In the hype in the run-up to the convention, the New York Daily News ran a story entitled “Former Vice President Biden to address N.Y. Democratic convention — where he’s expected to endorse Cuomo” by Kenneth Lovett on May 22, 2018, where we were informed as follows:
ALBANY – Former Vice President Joe Biden will address the state Democratic convention on Thursday.
Biden is expected to endorse Gov. Cuomo, with whom he has a good relationship.
Biden as vice president and after appeared with Cuomo a number of times.
He headlined a fund-raiser for Cuomo in 2017 and was present in recent years at various announcements, including the rebuilding of LaGuardia Airport, the push for a $15 an hour state minimum wage and the federal funding for a photonics institute in Rochester.
Biden in 2015 called Cuomo “just about the best governor in the whole United States.”
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Just about the best governor in the whole United States?
What a ringing endorsement that is.
I wonder who Joe Biden considers the best one to be?
As to Lady Hillary, the Albany, New York Times Union had an article about her appearance entitled “Churchill: A Clinton endorsement for Cuomo? Of course!” by Chris Churchill on May 21, 2018, where we learned this:
Albany – Hillary is with him, not her.
Clinton will endorse Andrew Cuomo’s reelection bid at Wednesday’s New York Democratic convention on Long Island, the New York Times first reported.
The governor, of course, is being challenged for the nomination by actor and activist Cynthia Nixon.
Hillary’s decision might be surprising if you believed the female solidarity, champion-of-women rhetoric employed during her campaign, along with the willingness to describe anyone who dared vote for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump as sexist.
“Young women have to support Hillary Clinton,” former secretary of state Madeline Albright said at a campaign rally during the Democratic presidential primary, when Bernie was giving Hillary more difficulty than anyone expected.
“Just remember, there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
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But of course, that was then, and this is now, that the twain are not the same, so too bad for Cynthia Nixon.
As to why that was in this case, the TU article continues as follows:
Gender aside, Clinton and Cuomo have much in common.
They are both center-left Democrats with famous last names who live in Westchester County and are especially good at raising money in ethically dubious ways from wealthy donors.
They are both, in other words, figures of the establishment who represent why voters distrust the establishment.
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And how very true that last statement is about both of them being figures of the establishment who represent why voters distrust the establishment.
As to the immense political power Young Andy Cuomo enjoys in New York state, in what is now just another footnote in the run-up to the Democrat Convention, CNN had an article entitled “Cynthia Nixon gets big endorsement as NY Democrats face rupture” by Gregory Krieg on 15 APRIL 2018, where we were given this background, to wit:
The New York Working Families Party, an influential coalition of labor unions and progressive activist groups, voted on Saturday to endorse Cynthia Nixon in her primary challenge to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
After hours of discussion, and in defiance of pleas from state committee members pushing to delay the decision, the party formally broke its uneasy alliance with Cuomo, the two-term governor leading Nixon in one early poll by a 3-to-1 margin.
Taking the podium, Nixon thanked the committee members for their “courage” and called the WFP, which has come under assault this week from inside and out — with two major unions leaving the fold in protest after it became clear Nixon was all but locked into the endorsement — the “political home for progressives in New York State, and a source of grassroots muscle for the movement.”
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Now, that is an interesting statement, that the Working Families Party is the “political home for progressives in New York State, and a source of grassroots muscle for the movement,” when Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Young Andy Cuomo are claiming that mantle for the Democrat party, instead.
Getting back to the CNN article, we have:
In so publicly rejecting Cuomo, the small party now finds itself at the center of a wider conflict pitting the state’s liberal establishment against a growing progressive movement.
To put a fine point on it, Nixon welcomed another endorsement earlier in the day from the New York Progressive Action Network, an organization formed by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.
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There are some interesting political dynamics going on here behind the scenes, that much is for certain, anyway.
Getting back to CNN:
The Cuomo campaign, in a statement released after the WFP vote, touted the governor’s liberal record and alluded to his recent role in brokering an end to a power-sharing deal between state Senate Republicans and a breakaway group of Democratic lawmakers.
“After nearly a decade of discord, we have a united Democratic Party, and the governor is 100 percent focused on maintaining that unity to fight Trump in Washington, take back the House and win the state Senate,” Abbey Fashouer, a Cuomo campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement.
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Trump is the political boogie-man, of course, the bête noire who gives the Democrats something to rail against, and rally against, to bind them together as a potent political force in 2020, because if they didn’t have Trump, they would have nothing at all, and that is a fact.
Getting back to the CNN story:
The WFP vote was, as one attendee muttered on her way into the downtown Albany hotel earlier in the day, “kind of a foregone conclusion” after Cuomo on Friday evening announced he would no longer seek the party’s backing.
His decision to cede the fight, a move critics dismissed as a transparent attempt to save face, followed a dramatic 24-hour unraveling within the WFP, as union backers fled under what party leaders described as pressure from Cuomo.
“In a meeting earlier this week, the governor was threatening people,” WFP State Director Bill Lipton said on Friday.
“Several times, he said ‘if unions or anyone give money to any of these groups, they can lose my number.'”
Lipton kept up the conciliatory tone on Saturday, casting the union defectors not as turncoats, but victims of a pressure campaign by Cuomo and his allies.
As the rift became clear, and The New York Times published a report detailing a behind-the-scenes pressure campaign, the WFP’s Lipton wrote in a fundraising email that unions’ absence will “hit us hard.”
Then he turned his attention to Cuomo.
“I want to be clear about what’s happening: rather than go before the members of our State Committee this weekend and make an argument as to why he deserves our endorsement, Governor Cuomo has instead chosen to respond the only way he knows how: retaliating with bullying and threats,” Lipton wrote.
“In doing so, he has put our union sisters and brothers in an almost impossible spot.”
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Here we are getting a first-hand opportunity to see the hard-ball, power politics that underlie presidential campaigns in action.
Getting back to the CNN article:
After the WFP meeting was adjourned on Saturday, Nixon was asked about the damaging battles of the past few days.
Like Lipton, she accused Cuomo of attempting to drive out his political opponents with too heavy a hand — and worried that it would cripple the organizations that rely in large part on labor’s support to fund their work.
“The part of this week that has troubled me the most is the threats that we have heard coming to defund not only the Working Families Party, but the community groups that have failed to endorse the governor,” she told reporters.
“I don’t think the governor’s demand for loyalty should go that far.”
“I think this is a democracy and people should endorse the people they want to endorse and not have their livelihoods put in danger.”
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And there we have it, people, the lead-in to the big Democrat Love-Fest in New York starring Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Young Andy Cuomo, and a cast of thousands, with Cynthia Nixon as the outsider looking in.
Stay tuned!
More is yet to come, so don’t touch that dial!
CNN , are you nuts, Wayne, you believe in ‘fake news’ OMG, under President Trump the country is celebrating its best economic posture in over three decades, unemployment it’s lowest, Black and Latino unemployment it’s lowest ever, GDP going straight up the charts, under Obama just the opposite, Wayne get with it. Did you read the book ‘ the LEFT BEHIND’ decline and rage in Rural, America, sorry Wayne your not that rage but a Liberal Communist
Anthony Sacco
Anthony (Tony) Sacco, that was huge, dude, as far as internet drama goes these days, you calling Wayne Creed a Liberal Communist, when he is anything but, a point most younger readers will be totally unaware of, which makes the gambit a safe one as far as you are concerned, for who even knows what a communist is these days, or cares?
What with the decline of political discourse in America, it is seldom one comes across such a smooth blending of satire and parody as you have accomplished in your post above.
But truthfully, Anthony (Tony) Sacco, compared to all the other things there are to care about today, what is going on with Khloe and Tristan, for example, or Meghan Markle’s new hat, communism is just so passe and so totally retro it is not funny – a page from yesterday out of a book nobody bothers to read anymore.
Communism has been dead and gone for years, now, Anthony (Tony) Sacco – don’t you remember?
Reagan whipped it but good and put it in its grave.
As to liberal communism, the Brits, who write pretty good in the language, but don’t speak it worth a damn, in the Mail & Guardian have an essay on that very subject by a dude named Bert Olivier, posted on: January 1, 2011, where he informs us as follows:
Like all oxymorons, the oxymoron “liberal communist”, seems to combine the impossible.
And yet, as every lover knows, Shakespeare’s “sweet sorrow” of Romeo and Juliet’s parting is all too real.
So, too, the fact that liberal communists, who ironically call themselves by that phrase, are an all too tangible part of our world.
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So we can see, Anthony (Tony) Sacco, that there are indeed people in America, if not the whole world, who self-identify as “liberal communists,” which is their God-given constitutional right, but I have never heard Wayne Creed self-identify as one, or more to the point, put forth opinions in here that would have the discerning reader think were supporting the liberal communist cause in America, whatever it might be.
And what on earth does liberal communism have to do with a thread on a Democrat Love-Fest in New York featuring a cast of thousands with such big-name headliners as the Democrat “Queen Mum” Hillary Clinton and “America’s Fighting Bulldog” Joe Biden and New York State’s Young Andy Cuomo, dubbed “The 21st Century Democrat” by the pundits, less Harvey Weinstein, who had other commitments that kept him from appearing?
Getting back to the liberal communists, we have:
In a nutshell, the adoption of this self-description is supposed to indicate that one way of seeing the function or justification of socialism (or communism, for that matter), namely, to provide in the needs of a broader society than that catered for by capitalism, can indeed be met by capitalists (note: not capitalism per se) themselves — hence liberal communist as description of the individual agents capable of giving the notion content.
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Can you see how that definition excludes Wayne Creed, Anthony (Tony) Sacco?
So who are these individual agents who think of themselves as liberal communists, and why is this not a directly systemic function of capitalism, but something wholly dependent on the agency — in fact, the whims — of individuals, Anthony (Tony) Sacco ?
Slavoj Zizek (in Violence, 2009) points out that the global entrepreneurs who are among the global elites that regularly attend the meetings (in a virtual “state of siege”) at the Swiss resort of Davos to discuss the global economy (pg. 13-14):
” … no longer accept the opposition between Davos (global capitalism) and Porto Alegre (the new social movements alternative to global capitalism).”
“Their claim is that we can have the global capitalist cake, i.e. thrive as profitable entrepreneurs, and eat it, too, ie. endorse the anti-capitalist causes of social responsibility and ecological concern.”
“No need for Porto Alegre, since Davos itself can become Porto Davos …”
“The new liberal communists are, of course, our usual suspects: Bill Gates and George Soros, the CEOs of Google, IBM, Intel, eBay, as well as their court philosophers, most notably the journalist Thomas Friedman.”
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Note, Anthony (Tony) Sacco, that neither Wayne Creed nor the Cape Charles Mirror are on that list, nor should they be.
With that out of the way, what did you think of those Democrats in New York snubbing Cynthia Nixon the way they did?
And what about Democrat Chairman Tom Perez endorsing Young Andy as we are told in the POLITICO article “Perez infuriates liberals with Cuomo endorsement – The DNC chairman pits himself against Deputy Chairman Keith Ellison by intervening in the Democratic primary for New York governor.” by Edward-Isaac Dovere on 05/24/2018, as follows:
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez has said repeatedly that the national party shouldn’t, and won’t, endorse in primaries.
But on Thursday, he stood on a Long Island stage and endorsed Andrew Cuomo, the New York governor who is facing a challenge from actress Cynthia Nixon.
The decision to pick favorites in a primary pits the DNC chair against the DNC deputy chair, Keith Ellison.
And it has re-opened an ongoing internal fight within the party, while giving critics ammunition to question Perez’s leadership.
The New York race isn’t just any two Democrats fighting for the nomination: Nixon is making her race explicitly about a challenge from the left and the new progressive energy of the party that she says Cuomo is out of sync with.
And she’s doing it with the support of many progressives in the state who identified with Bernie Sanders’ campaign.
It also comes as the DNC is trying to put the 2016 battles in the past, despite lingering suspicions among many Sanders supporters about Perez.
He was elected chair last year over Ellison, who was backed by Sanders.
“I’ve not only admired Andrew Cuomo, I have admired the Cuomo family since my youth.”
“I’ve admired what they stood for and what they fought for since I was a kid,” Perez said, in an appearance onstage at the New York state Democratic Convention Thursday morning at Hofstra University.
“We often have debates about what wing of the Democratic Party we belong to.”
Perez rattled off Cuomo’s record of progressive accomplishments, from passing a $15 minimum wage to legalizing gay marriage and paid family leave.
Perez called Cuomo and his lieutenant governor running mate Kathy Hochul “charter members of the accomplishment wing of the Democratic Party” — seeming to echo a knock that Cuomo himself has made against Nixon and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — and “that’s why I’m proud to endorse them.”
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What is up with that, Anthony (Tony) Sacco?
How is that different from that behind-the-scenes crap the Democrats were doing with Hillary Clinton in her race against Bernie Sanders?
Any light you can shed on that for us?
After the recently-concluded Great Democrat Love-Fest on Long Island in Young Andy Cuomo’s “Empire” state of New York, home to Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill, where actress and political challenger Cynthia Nixon was given the cold shoulder by the real Democrats in attendance there, events are now in the saddle and ride mankind, or at least the democratical faction of it, as we see in this FOX News article “Bid to block Bernie Sanders? DNC adopts rule change, wants only avowed Democrats to run” by Stephen Sorace on 9 June 2018, to wit:
The Democratic National Committee adopted a new rule Friday aimed at preventing non-Democrats, such as independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, from seeking the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, reports said.
The rule change, adopted at a DNC meeting in Providence, R.I., requires all candidates for the party’s nomination to “run and serve” as Democrats, Yahoo News reported.
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Bernie, a political outsider like Cynthia Nixon, is getting the same cold shoulder from the real and true Democrats who are rallying around Young Andy Cuomo as their “great white hope” to regain the Washington White House and the fabulous political power that goes with it in 2020.
For that to happen, of course, outsiders like Bernie have to be squeezed out of the fold, and so it is to be.
But is political vindictiveness also at issue here?
Let’s go back to the article and see:
Some supporters of Sanders — who caucuses with the Democrats despite declining to declare a party affiliation — say the move was motivated by “spite” after Sanders gave Hillary Clinton a run for her money during the Democratic primaries in 2016.
Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, ultimately lost the nomination to Clinton when superdelegates from states he won chose not to vote for him at the party’s 2016 convention in Philadelphia.
“You had superdelegates voting for Hillary Clinton in states that I won pretty handsomely,” Sanders told Post this week.
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Hard-ball politics, Bernie, that is the way the game is played.
If you can’t hit fast pitching and are afraid of brush-back pitches, should you really be out there on the field playing the game?
Something to think about, anyway.
Getting back to the story:
Still, the rule change left some Sanders supporters puzzled as to why Democrats would want to make their party less inclusive.
“We just came off a devastating presidential loss in 2016,” Mark Longabaugh, a senior adviser to Sanders’ 2016 campaign, told Yahoo News.
“It would seem to me the actual impetus would be to expand the Democratic Party.”
“I, just for the life of me, don’t see any motivation for this beyond personal spite.”
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The Democrats, despite the name, a misnomer if there ever was one, are really not very democratical at all, as we see from the continuation of that story:
A photo of a printout of the rule change was shared Friday in a Twitter message posted by DNC member Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
“At the time a presidential candidate announces their candidacy publicly, they must publicly affirm that they are a Democrat,” the printout says.
“Each candidate must then affirm in writing that they: A. are a member of the Democratic Party; B. will accept the Democratic nomination; C. will run and serve as a member of the Democratic Party.”
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Translation: read the instruction book on what it means to be a real Democrat, as opposed to a fake Democrat like Bernie or Cynthia Nixon, and then, do not deviate one iota from those instructions.
And if you are really good at it, brainwashing yourself to be a Democrat ideologue, then you could find yourself posing as president of the United States, and people, in America, at least for the Democrats.
Stay tuned, more to come!
Hi Paul Plante. Hows that lower left leg treating you?
Just fine, actually!
How about yours?
And Pok, dude, as our resident poly sci expert in here, what are your thoughts on Tom Perez, who as head of the DNC, is supposed to be (nudge! nudge! wink! wink!) “neutral,” standing up at the podium at the recent Democrat Love-Fest in New York to endorse Young Andy Cuomo, who Perez called a “charter member of the accomplishment wing of the Democratic Party” — a seeming knock against Cynthia Nixon and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who Young Andy Cuomo does not get along with, at all, probably because de Blasio represents a political threat to Young Andy, and if there is one thing Young Andy does not like, it is political competition?
What kind of message are the Democrats making to the candid world with that statement. besides the fact that the 2020 Democrat presidential selection process is already rigged in Young Andy Cuomo’s favor?
When Young Andy becomes president, do you think he will put Hillary Clinton on the Supreme Court by executive order?