I don’t have the stomach to check, but I wonder how they’re spinning the fact that all prominent Democrats are calling on Cuomo to resign. I wonder if they knew it was even possible to ask a member of your own party to resign when caught doing something wrong.
Though how soft is the soft landing may depend on what is the cause for the removal and what are the circumstances of the removal. Cuomo has been digging in because he knows that right now the pressure on the party apparat will be to deny him too golden a parachute, and he has read the Zeitgeist and knows that in this year 2021, as Czarcasm mentioned, the vibe is “You say I must leave? Make me!”
They’re probably spinning a line like “Ah, they’ll probably let him lie low for a while then find him some sinecure — faculty position, partnership in a Democratic-friendly law firm, political consulting work, etc.”
Cuomo is probably looking at the precedents. Al Franken resigned and his political career disappeared. He’s not being offered positions as an advisor or pundit. Donald Trump refused to quit and nobody forced him out of office. This is the new political reality; you stay until they drag you out.
Note how one party quickly called for the resignation of one of its own while the other rallied behind a confessed sexual predator running for president and confirmed another for the Supreme Court.
Yes, this. I’d be surprised if they even mention Letitia James in connection with the Cuomo case. Or if they do, they can probably count on their viewers failing to make a connection with her “persecution” of Trump if unreminded.
Right-wing hypocrisy is on full and unashamed display, today—the gleeful crowing about Cuomo is untainted by any mention of the numerous accusations against their golden gods Trump (and to a lesser extent) Matt Gaetz and Brett Kavanaugh.
Not that annoyance at their brazen two-facedness can distract me from my conviction that Andrew Cuomo has to go. If he goes kicking and screaming that’s bad. But we can survive the knowledge that some Democrats are awful people, given that demonstrably many Democrats (those calling for Cuomo to go) are decent people.
(Chris Cuomo should be let go by CNN, too, by the way:
)
eta–thanks to BobLibDem for his post which reminded me about Kavanaugh.
Mr. Weiner has spent most of the last year running a Brooklyn company called IceStone, which makes environmentally sustainable countertops. He put in place a policy of offering job interviews to formerly incarcerated people. He’s now in the process of stepping down as chief executive, he said, to try to turn the company into a “worker-run cooperative.” He and Ms. Abedin, who still works for Mrs. Clinton, are finalizing their divorce, but they live down the hall from each other in the same apartment building. Mr. Weiner is in a 12-step program for sex addiction, and one of its conditions is that he not talk about it. His life, he said, largely revolves around their 9-year-old son.
Franken is getting pundit gigs. He’s made a variety of media appearances recently and has a national “tour” going with various stops to do…something or other.
“I’m getting almost no pushback,” he told The Daily Beast. “I feel very welcome in the public debate.”
The article mentions that a political future for Franken has not been entirely dismissed.
If Cuomo manages a semi-graceful exit before being impeached, don’t exclude the possibility of lucrative personal appearances and/or a book somewhere down the line.
The fact that Leticia James, who clearly doesn’t play favorites, is going after Cuomo on the sex stuff but not the nursing home stuff is all the proof I need that there’s no there there.
In the past, the Republicans did a decent job of telling their party members when it was time to go. Richard Nixon left when his Republican Senators told him it was time to go. It would be interesting to know how Clinton would fare in 2021.
Meanwhile the County DA offices for Albany, Westchester, Nassau and New York Co (Manhattan) have started their own criminal inquiries and asked James for the information on possible crimes committed in their jurisdictions.
There are some fairly basic differences between Franken and Cuomo. Franken wasn’t accused of abusing his power (as a Senator) to harm the careers of women who complained about his conduct*, for one thing.
Some members of the public will shrug about men groping women, but getting fired because the boss didn’t like you complaining about his groping–that will strike a chord for even the shruggers. Abuse of power is not seen in a friendly light by anyone not in power. (Neither the abuse nor the groping should be acceptable or given a pass, of course.)
*nearly all of which occurred while he was a comedian, not a Senator.
On the “resign under pressure” vs “tough it out” spectrum there’s also the example of Senator Larry Craig, who was charged with allegedly soliciting men in an airport bathroom and initially said he would resign when it went public. But he changed his mind and decided to finish out his term, and he was basically treated like he was radioactive by the Republican Caucus. He apparently went on to found a lobby shop that never had more than a couple of clients and folded in 2019.