As the far right has gained ascendancy, and the 2024 election is historicized as a blowout victory for Donald Trump rather than the relatively close contest that it actually was, members of the Democratic establishment and party leadership seem to be settling on the lesson that they will take into the second decade of the Trump era: if you can’t beat him, imitate him.
It’s long been the impulse of the party to move right, chasing Republican victories by replicating Republican policy positions, and since their loss last November many Democrats have followed in this decades-old tradition, shifting their rhetoric still further rightward onborder policy,crypto,foreign policy,trans rightsandDEI. They respond to polling and to a vague sense of the cultural zeitgeist, aiming less to persuade than to imitate. Often, Democrats seem as if they are not offering a different policy vision for the country so much as they are offering a different stylistic one: the same austerity, cultural revanchism and inequality but in a more polite package.
Now the packaging, too, is changing. Having ceded much cultural and policy ground to Trump, and having thoroughly fled from their previous rhetoric endorsing social justice struggles for gender and racial equality, the party now seems to be looking to elevate not just its most conservative members, but also its most vulgar, cruel and combative ones, leaning into a masculinism that mimics the corruption, boorishness and irreverent disdain for the public of Trump himself. The Atlantic called it “Searching for the Democratic Bully”. We might also think of it as the abandonment of decency.
That is one way to characterize the Democratic leadership’s near-lockstep support of Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York state whom many polls favor to win the Democratic nomination for the New York City mayoral race on Tuesday. Cuomo has racked up endorsements from a generation of centrist Democratic heavyweights: from the former presidentBill Clinton, to the South Carolina representativeJim Clyburn, to the aggressively pro-Israel New York congressmanRichie Torres, to the New York Times, which hadpledgednot to endorse in local races less than a year ago – only topublish an op-edpraising Cuomo and casting aspersions on his major challenger for the mayoral nomination, the charismatic millennial state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.
Cuomo, in many ways, is a Democratic Trump: he is loud, vulgar, ill-informed, resentful, vengeful, contemptuous of his constituents, and accused of being abusive toward women. He is apparently indifferent to corruption and willing to tell lies; he is reportedly obsessed, as Trump is, with getting revenge on his perceived enemies. He is ageing, rich, out of touch and hated by the left, having left the governor’s mansion with a long record of stymieing progressive agenda items in one of the nation’s largest blue states. This is evidently just the kind of candidate the Democratic leadership is looking for.
It’s not as though Cuomo has not been tested. He resigned from the governor’s office in disgrace in 2021, just four years ago, following a slew of sexual misconduct allegations that were declared credible in a thorough report from the New York attorney general, Letitia James. (Cuomo has denied wrongdoing, though he extended apologies to some of the women at the time.) Cuomo has spent the past four years attempting topunish the womenwho came forward against him, suing one – a then-25-year-old assistant – for defamation and demanding hergynecological recordsin court, and dragging the others through vexatious and punitive legal proceedings for which New York taxpayers have beenfooting the bill, to the tune of tens of millions. He has beenpublicly swipingat James, too, for having the gall to do her duty and investigate the claims against him.
His petulant and childish behavior since resigning largely matches the way he behaved as governor, when Cuomo was known for his acute personal hostility to other lawmakers, prominently those in his own party. When a stateanti-corruption commissionstarted sniffing around deals made by Cuomo and his allies, Cuomo had the commission shut down. After Cuomo bungled his handling of the pandemic, making a mistake that may have costthousands of seniorstheir lives, Cuomo could have accepted responsibility and apologized to the New Yorkers whose loved ones died. Instead, he and his aides tried to cover up the deaths, and when a state assemblymember, Ron Kim, spoke out against them, Cuomo called him repeatedly and threatened to “destroy” him,according to Kim.
To me, this reads as insecurity, egotism, the kind of pettiness and self-seeking that makes someone morally unfit for leadership. But for the Democratic party, feeling demoralized and emasculated, this kind of bullying and flagrant disregard for principle have come to seem like virtues. In endorsing him forNew YorkCity mayor, Torres called Cuomo a “tough guy”, and not a “nice guy”, which he meant as a compliment. This is more or less the establishment’s consensus: rather than oppose Trumpism’s masculinist domination politics and unaccountable cult of personality, the idea now, in the party’s embrace of Cuomo, seems to be to mimic them; not to oppose corruption and dictatorial politics per se, but to offer a Democratic version of them.
This is a moral failure, as well as a failure of imagination. Just four years ago, the Democrats offered a real contrast to Trump, the abuser in chief, by calling for Cuomo’s resignation, and signaling that the abuse of women would not be tolerated within their ranks. The about-face by those who called for Cuomo’s resignation then but are unwilling to declare him unfit for office now – including the statesenator Jessica Ramos, theUS senator Kirsten Gillibrand,Torresand theTimes– is a sign of the establishment’s cowardice. If they are willing, even conspicuously eager, to abandon their stated principles when they think that those principles have become politically inconvenient, why should New Yorkers trust them to behave with integrity and trustworthiness the rest of the time?
In addition to dishonorable, it is not clear that the Democrats’ embrace of masculine bullies will even be politically wise. After all, why would those voters who long for a strongman chase after a pale Democratic imitation of Trump, when Republicans are offering them the real thing? Isn’t it more pragmatic – as well as more dignified – to present voters with something different, and maybe even more decent and hopeful, than the mixture of domination and resentment on offer from the right?
But perhaps what is most telling about the Democratic party’s embrace of Cuomo is not just their disregard for principle or policy, but their willingness to squander other talent. The mayoral race in New York City is crowded, but Cuomo’s two nearest contenders – Mamdani and Brad Lander, the city comptroller – have run remarkable campaigns. Lander has touted a considerable record of accomplishments for the city, underscoring his ability to deliver on promises to New Yorkers and his willingness to persist against formidable interests in long fights for things like bike lanes and affordable housing. Mamdani, meanwhile, has an infectious charisma, and has launched a campaign that has excited young voters, energized a small army of volunteers, and deployed innovative messaging tactics, achieving impressive numbers with relatively little money. You would think that the Democratic party would be more eager to make use of these men’s talents – the policy achievements of one, the preternatural campaign skills of the other. Instead, mainstream Democrats seem fearful, and almost hostile, towards these candidates. Then again, that’s much the way they feel about their voting base itself.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist