{"id":51619,"date":"2021-02-24T08:57:25","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T08:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=133419"},"modified":"2021-02-24T08:57:25","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T08:57:25","slug":"cuomos-cover-up-will-be-most-effectively-weaponized-by-the-right-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/24\/cuomos-cover-up-will-be-most-effectively-weaponized-by-the-right-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuomo\u2019s Cover-up Will be Most Effectively Weaponized by the Right"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
\"\"

Photograph Source: DonkeyHotey – CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

On February 11, news broke<\/a> that the Cuomo administration intentionally hid data on COVID-related nursing home deaths from the federal government and New York state legislators, ostensibly for fear of a Department of Justice investigation and potential federal prosecution.<\/p>\n

The revelation was fairly shocking, but hardly out of character. Cuomo\u2019s mishandling of the pandemic\u2014coupled with a particularly personal brand of megalomaniacal arrogance\u2014has been plenty obvious for some time<\/a>. The specific issue of nursing home deaths has been a persistent note in this mismanagement. A rule<\/a> adopted early in the crisis, forcing nursing homes to re-admit convalescing COVID-19 patients, was blamed, at least in part, for the rampant early spread of the coronavirus through New York State nursing homes. (As David Sirota pointed out<\/a>, the rule coincided neatly with a corporate immunity provision in the state budget that protected the heavily Cuomo-donating healthcare industry from COVID-related lawsuits.)<\/p>\n

For months afterward, the state refused to release a definitive total of individuals who had died in nursing homes. The administration was forced to address this about three weeks ago, when a report<\/a> by New York Attorney General Letitia James estimated that the official count of nursing home fatalities may have been only 50% of the actual total. The official death toll has since been progressively revised upwards, and now stands around 15,000 deaths.<\/p>\n

This latest scandal predictably triggered a wave of calls for accountability\u2014including from left-wing New York politicians, like DSA-endorsed State Senator Julia Salazar<\/a>, NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams<\/a>, and many others. Some critics have called for the governor to resign; more mildly, others insist that his emergency powers be curtailed by the legislature.<\/p>\n

The saga was further dramatized<\/a> this past week, as it was revealed that Cuomo purportedly threatened to \u201cdestroy\u201d State Assembly member Ron Kim. Kim\u2019s uncle died from COVID in a nursing home, and the legislator has been an increasingly vocal critic of the state\u2019s handling of this issue. It simultaneously came out that the Department of Justice is investigating<\/a> whether the Cuomo administration manipulated nursing home data.<\/p>\n

Calls for accountability are growing, and they may indeed have some effect. But it is the New York State Republican Party\u2014a not-impotent force<\/a>\u2014that is poised to take fullest advantage of this blunder, and Cuomo\u2019s many other missteps.<\/p>\n

Why? Democrats are hardly in lockstep around the governor. Many are considerably and understandably frustrated; after all, this scandal involved his lying to legislative Democrats. With the revelation of his attacks on Kim, Cuomo appears to be losing sympathy and support at a startling rate. Even so, Cuomo has consolidated remarkable power<\/a> over the last decade\u2014accelerated over the last year\u2014and there simply is no mass, countervailing force to his left in New York State. Gubernatorial challenges have been attempted twice during his time in office\u2014Zephyr Teachout in 2014 and Cynthia Nixon in 2018\u2014and both failed to amass close to sufficient power. The Working Families Party is a deeply weakened<\/a> and compromised<\/a> political force. While left-wing state Democrats would presumably like to see a stronger challenge in 2022\u2014when Cuomo plans to run for a fourth term\u2014it will likely be an uphill battle.<\/p>\n

Is it because\u2014as Cuomo likes to imply, if not say outright, to justify his own conservatism\u2014New Yorkers are more inherently conservative? I\u2019m not so sure. New York certainly isn\u2019t the liberal, blue state its defenders\u2014which again include Cuomo, when it\u2019s convenient for him\u2014make it out to be. Its politics are nuanced. (As a simple gauge, take a look at the Democratic primary voting maps from 2016<\/a>, and the general election maps for 2016<\/a> and 2020<\/a>; all reveal a complex, overlapping picture.) But the organization for a progressive challenge is very limited at present.<\/p>\n

The right, meanwhile, is mobilizing. Already we see a consistent right-wing response\u2014building on a longstanding, minoritarian, but widespread and growing dissatisfaction with Andrew Cuomo. Chairman of the New York GOP, Nick Langworthy, has been making the rounds to push for Cuomo\u2019s impeachment. He and others are also promoting the establishment of a recall mechanism in New York State\u2014looking at you, Gavin Newsome<\/em>. Dutchess County Executive (and 2018 Republican gubernatorial candidate) Marc Molinaro has endorsed the move for impeachment, calling the governor \u201cunfit for public office<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York-based national GOP figures agree. Elise Stefanik\u2014the increasingly right-wing<\/a> NY-21 state representative, and potential 2022 gubernatorial candidate, so recently on the defensive over her support for Trump\u2019s \u201cstop-the-steal\u201d efforts\u2014referred to Cuomo\u2019s \u201cstunning and criminal abuse of power<\/a>.\u201d Likewise, Long Island GOP Congressman Lee Zeldin announced that the entire state GOP congressional delegation would call on the Justice Department to investigate the cover-up.<\/p>\n

As things get worse\u2014and they likely will, as the state struggles with COVID<\/a>, and New York\u2019s heavily tourist-dependent economy<\/a> continues to suffer\u2014the calls for accountability will grow more stringent and vehement. And with a deeply neutralized left, the only direction for change will be to the right.<\/p>\n

Already we see ominous signs of right-wing radicalization in New York State. As the protests catalyzed by George Floyd\u2019s murder spread this summer, a pro-police \u201ccounter-protest\u201d turned violent in Pleasant Valley, New York, in the Hudson Valley. As reported<\/a> by Arvind Dilawar, BLM protesters were attacked, spat on, and called racial slurs. Dilawar later reported<\/a> on a number of attendees of the Capitol Riot who came from the Hudson Valley, in the context of right-wing organizing in this region. A broad portrait of New York State shows considerable wariness around issues of race: one recent poll<\/a> found that only a minority of New Yorkers\u201431%\u2014consider race relations \u201cexcellent\u201d or \u201cgood.\u201d Here in swing district NY-19, incumbent Democrat Antonio Delgado beat Trump-supporting Kyle van de Water by about ten points last November. But it\u2019s only Delgado\u2019s second term, and the centrist Democrat will be acutely vulnerable in the 2022 midterm.<\/p>\n

Indeed, while 2018 GOP gubernatorial candidate Molinaro was relatively moderate in his allegiance to Trump, it would be surprising if the 2022 GOP candidate for governor were not a MAGA supporter. The mythical \u201cmoderate Republican\u201d exists here no longer, at least in electoral politics. Such radicalization, coupled with Cuomo\u2019s \u201ccentrist\u201d failings, leave a marked opening. Pending the course of the next year and a half, increasing Republican control<\/a> of the state is entirely possible.<\/p>\n

But perhaps, with Cuomo as governor, this was inevitable. This latest episode brought to mind a friend\u2019s comment, about a year ago, that while she didn\u2019t love Cuomo\u2019s politics, she liked his style of combativeness towards Trump. I think this is a common sentiment: Cuomo\u2019s liberal base of support sees him as a brawler<\/em>, and they like that, because he\u2019s their <\/em>brawler, a liberal <\/em>brawler.<\/p>\n

What many thus far neglect, or fail, to see is that\u2014in his bluster, his bullying<\/a>, his impotent showmanship<\/a>; in his ego, his contempt for reporters<\/a> and health experts<\/a>; in his inability to apologize<\/a> for deadly mistakes; and above all in his inhumane politics<\/a>\u2014Cuomo most closely resembles<\/em> Donald Trump. Let\u2019s hope they see it now, and he is meaningfully held to account, because the failure to do so will only ensure that what comes next is worse.<\/p>\n

The post Cuomo\u2019s Cover-up Will be Most Effectively Weaponized by the Right<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 11, news broke that the Cuomo administration intentionally hid data on COVID-related nursing home deaths from the federal government and New York state legislators, ostensibly for fear of a Department of Justice investigation and potential federal prosecution. The revelation was fairly shocking, but hardly out of character. Cuomo\u2019s mishandling of the pandemic\u2014coupled with More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Cuomo\u2019s Cover-up Will be Most Effectively Weaponized by the Right<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2523,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2523"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51620,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51619\/revisions\/51620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}