What does Cuomo get for having five turncoat Democrats working to maintain Republican control of the Senate?
Although Cuomo took all of a day to start backing down, at least in his public statements, from this commitment being an actual commitment. (And his commitment to raising the minimum wage!)
No alternative sources of power to compete with within his own party.
By giving them a chamber? That doesn't seem like much of a return.
Moby, the general belief is that Cuomo wants Republican control to avoid having to sign any particularly liberal legislation that might interfere with his desire to run for president.
He can't run for president. Constitutionally, people named Cuomo can only talk about running for president but they can't actually do it. I remember the 80s.
Did the name of the Working Families Party come out of the same cynical skunkworks that names charter schools things like "Successamania!" and "Excellento-school"?
You can't let single people form a left-of-center political party.
Moby, we all saw how Occupy Wall Street went down. You don't have to rub it in.
Trying to understand local politics is like showing up at another family's dinner party and trying to figure out why Cousin Al is angry with Uncle Vince over that thing Aunt Marge said last year.
1: I'd love an answer to that one, too!
Here in MA we have no Republicans in the legislature except a decorative sprinkling. They are mostly ignored.
I live here and I still don't get it, mostly. Of course, I could say the same about my family.
We have a neighbor who is very involved in local politics -- he ran for alderman a few years ago; at the Memorial Day parade the mayor came by to shake his hand -- and I have a lot of trepidation about engaging him for basically the reasons in 10, even though some of the things he seems to be backing (various things to make our street less friendly for drivers cutting through places, among other things) are things I think are good.
THIS IS NOT "NYC" OR "LOCAL" POLITICS
I have a neighbor who likes to ask me who I'm voting for and make dismissive gestures when I say who.
17: Whoops, Freudian typo. I did mean NYS.
The neighbor looks sort of like a bearded, chain-smoking Papa Smurf.
Henchman 24: Come on! They have one female servicing a large group of males. That implies a species that lays eggs.
Henchman 21: Oh my God, you're crazy! They're so obviously mammals!
Henchman 24: Please! She'd be in estrus 24/7 if she didn't lay eggs.
Henchman 21: Smurfs don't lay eggs! I won't tell you this again! Papa Smurf has a fucking beard! They're mammals!
You've spent way too much time thinking about Smurf reproduction.
IT'S COOL NOT THE FIRST TIME NOW WHERE ARE OUR ROYALTIES FOR "WING STOP" AND "BUFFALO WILD WINGS."
21: huh, my neighbor is a stalwart at the local beard and moustache contest. I think we've found the key!
23 Or way to much time watching the Venture Bros. Which is time well spent, in my book.
Per 24, presumably this is the key to understanding NY State politics.
How valid is the Vox article that Cuomo is basically Grover Norquist plus gay marriage?
Wasn't Smurfette created by that evil guy? They must be sequential hermaphrodites or something because they were reproducing without her.
29: Pretty fairly accurate. I would add to that that he's the opposite of a technocrat (if there were a non-pejorative usage of technocrat, which I wish there were). Literally no interest in actually governing effectively; the only reason he cares about anything in NYS is positioning for the next election.
Or they killed the previous queen, like bees
(if there were a non-pejorative usage of technocrat, which I wish there were)
Maybe Habermasian would work for that? At least, that's the impression I got from the five pages I managed to read before I couldn't give a shit.
Here's Cuomo prevaricating about the state senate:
This is about electing people who support an agenda. I also will oppose Democrats who will oppose the things we try to pass. I've been trying to support something called the Women's Equality Act that protects a woman's right to choose in New York. There are Democrats who don't support that. It's not as easy as all Democrats are good, all Republicans are bad, or vice versa. You have to also look at the issues and where people stand on the issues and that's what voters should be doing.
A profile in courage. (That said, the WFP is an arm of the unions, and they clearly learned the lesson that if you strike at the king, you'd best not miss; Cuomo's bad enough without being motivated to destroy them out of spite or power politics. But I was really hoping they could peel off 20% of the gubernatorial vote with Diane Ravitch, especially since Cuomo would still win.)
Just because it's a pet peeve, "prevaricating" means lying, not what I think you mean, which is more like waffling or blowing smoke.
I wasn't hoping that he'd effectively support a progressive agenda; it's not in him. But if he either brings about Dem. control of the Senate, or at least stops blocking it, that's a huge deal.
He really is awful -- he's on my list of Democrats where I'd actually look closely at the record and positions of any Republican running against him, because flipping sides isn't inconceivable.
OT: I asked myself, "How will TWYRCL respond if I change my morning iPhone alarm music to Basil Pouledoris' peerless 'Anvil of Crom'?"
Answer: Uncharmedly.
38 - Really? Because Merriam-Webster agrees with me.
Can LB or anyone else elaborate on the details of the OP a bit? Why would someone vote for Cuomo on the WFP ticket rather than the Democractic one, unless they would vote for an actual WFP candidate anyway? When you say the ballot line is the only political force of the party, do they not have any elected representatives themselves? And if they're a wing of the unions, do they not have campaign finance/organisational leverage outside of the ballot paper?
OT: Has this been discussed here? LB seems to subscribe to this as she sends her children off into the wild (subway).
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/opinion/sunday/the-wild-children-of-yesteryear.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=OP_TWC_20140603&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1388552400000&bicme=1420088400000&_r=2
Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? I think M-W has the shade of meaning wrong. I oversimplified, it does imply evasiveness/plausible deniability, but as I understand it to be properly used, you're not 'prevaricating' unless you're intentionally creating a particular false belief; simply getting away with not answering isn't prevarication unless you're leading your listeners astray in a specific direction.
(That is, it's a specific form of lying, where you mislead by equivocation.)
Ah, I see where you're reading of my use is coming. No, the lie I am attributing to Cuomo is that he is going to engage in any sort of efforts to help the Democrats retake the Senate leadership at all. All the rumpty-tump about Democrats who support his agenda is just a thumb in progressives' eyes. (Every single one of them, one at a time.)
Why would someone vote for Cuomo on the WFP ticket rather than the Democractic one, unless they would vote for an actual WFP candidate anyway?
I think the idea is that it shows the Democratic candidates how much of their votes come from people who agree with WFP, and how much they stand to lose if they move far enough to the center to alienate them.
Oh, you're taking "swindle" as an assumption. Could be. I was figuring that a deal reported that unambiguously, there was a shot that he could be held to it.
Well, sure, but why wouldn't those people dream of voting WFP against a Dem (as LB put it)? And if that is indeed the case, surely the candidates don't actually have much to lose.
I vote the WFP ballot line every single time. Sometimes there is more than one Democratic candidate for a local office; in the absence of knowing more about the candidates (which is almost always--there are a lots of local elected offices), I vote for the one that managed to get the WFP endorsement.
Something like that would be helpful. I had having to know more about so many candidates. Quite possibly the most consequential votes I ever cast are for the local committee people and I don't even know who those people are.
These aren't even people that I could get information about from the news. I'd have to go to meetings and meet them to learn stuff.
Do they not do fliers and websites and stuff?
Not usually, no. Usually, there isn't a whole bunch of choice either. It's vote for seven out of a list of six to eight.
Last election, I voted for a guy because his mom asked me to. I figure somebody who can get is mom to stand outside a polling place is probably less likely to be evil than you'd expect from random chance.
I don't know why she wasn't running herself. Probably has a criminal record or lives in a different area.
54. He thought you'd think that. All part of his cunning plan.
Earnest soapbox alert: It's called the Working Families Party because the Labor-ACORN Party wasn't going to fly. "Working families" is what a lot of labor has been using for many years now. It sounds focus group-y, but it works.
The fusion voting system that allows WFP to exist used to be a way for voters to make a vague gesture toward libertarians and Greens. WFP has used it to become a meaningful political force in the state. Several politicians have been elected solely on the WFP line and WFP votes have provided the margin of victory in a number of other elections, which forces the Dems to take them more seriously than they would a progressive coalition within the party.
I haven't talked with anyone about this Cuomo deal specifically, but the WFP leadership didn't just fall off the turnip truck and I'm quite sure their calculus took into account the likelihood that Cuomo reneges.
Because of liability concerns, we can no longer allow passengers on our vehicles.
41, 48: There's a couple of things. First, there's primary endorsements, where one Dem is running against another. Second, there are local elections, where the WFP might be able to beat a Dem with a more progressive candidate, or more realistically might be able to punish a bad Dem by splitting the vote (because I don't keep track, I actually don't know how often this happens, or even if it ever does). Only the gubernatorial election result matters for keeping the WFP ballot line.
Finally, the "I vote the WFP line where it doesn't hurt the Democrats, but wouldn't otherwise" vote, which is probably most of it (I'm mostly in that category myself) inflates the apparent real progressive vote. Cuomo can't tell me (who would probably, hating myself, flip back to Dem if the WFP split away from him and it looked like a close election against a particularly intolerable Republican) from a real WFP zealot who wouldn't, so he's under a little more pressure to make deals than he would be otherwise. He knows the fairweather WFPers are most of the WFP vote, but he can't certainly tell what the breakdown is.
|| Lost an argument with the wife: there really is a federal law in Germany prohibiting using lawnmowers on Sundays and holidays, and otherwise between 8 pm and 7 am. That's some big government! |>
My belief is that it is reliably thought of to enhance the power of third parties. As third parties become more powerful (or as they seem plausible candidates to get any power at all), I think there's at least a strong tendency for them to become less silly. In Mass, I think there'd be potential for a reasonable party to emerge to the left of the Democrats.
It also allows the third parties to have a voice that doesn't involve throwing the election.
As third parties become more powerful (or as they seem plausible candidates to get any power at all), I think there's at least a strong tendency for them to become less silly.
On the other hand, Ukip.
60: I knew that! I was pretty surprised when I first heard about it though.
On the other hand, Ukip.
The exception that proves the rule? I get the feeling that Farage has been doing his damnedest to make it less silly in the last few weeks, but the thing has careened out of his control.
WFP has figured out how to make fusion voting a good thing for progressives and for labor. It's not a great solution, but I have to think it's better than the usual American system. More generally, our first-past-the-post electoral rules and the structure of our legislative representation significantly impede attempts to translate labor power into electoral/legislative power. I'm usually in favor of any plausible changes that take us away from the status quo in that regard.
The WFP is great, for exactly the reasons Bave says. Although I guess in terms of results ... the NY Democratic Party is still stunningly bad given its electorate. The only alleviating factor is that it's maybe not so bad when you factor in the 200 years in which the NY, especially NYC, Dem party has been run by corrupt assholes.
Also, I have a relative who ran as a fusion WFP-Socialist in NY State and won.
If you like the status quo, then you don't want fusion voting. Easy.
It's great when there are trusted endorsers. I don't think local politics is really as impenetrable as people like to say -- instead, we make ridiculous choices, paying actual attention to things like the details of health insurance proposals made by presidential candidates as if they are significant even in a symbolic sense, rather than the people running for the positions where most governance is actually done.
That's certainly true. For example, there's an LA County Supervisors race on now, which is a job that's one of the most powerful political jobs in the country (in terms of direct ability to control important parts of government for millions of people). But even here most people don't really know that the county supervisors are super important.
Even when there are endorsers, why and on what issues is not easy to interpret.
A Chicago ballot has the major executive and legislative candidates, the candidates for the elected boards and regulatory agencies, and the judges.
For the latter it's easy to find tables ranking each candidate according to different bar associations, representing different outlooks. Not much trouble there.
For the boards, we have LWV and IVI, Independent Voters of Illinois, a rather liberal body of the same kind, which endorses candidates for such bodies as the Mosquito Abatement District and the Water Reclamation Board. I presume the candidates answer questionnaires.
You have to use these things, to find your way among hundreds of candidates, but it's by no means clear what policy issues are likely to be effected.
73: I so agree. Besides the incumbency-maximization strategies, I think especially in big counties, it's problematic that there are always only 5 supervisor seats. SF has 11, but that's because it's a city-county: an Alameda County supervisor represents 315,000 people, San Diego 640,000, and LA 2 million, but we still label devolution to counties "local control". Some high-population counties in other states have moved to county councils with larger membership.
Just as I think California should be broken into 5 or 6 states, I'd support breaking up overstuffed counties, especially those like Alameda, where you have Livermore and Oakland which are different enough that allowing them separate governance isn't a bad thing.
Maybe Virginia and Maryland have the right way to deal with large cities.
69
I'll mostly agree, except that the level of corruption and capture by "Big " is pretty astonishing. It will be very interesting to see whether Boston's (new) Mayor, Martin Walsh, who is bit more left than usual, does anything useful or just flames out.
77 -- strong disagree. The last thing we need are more tiny stupid governments. That just makes the problem of low information, low attention elections worse -- everyone knows that the Governor or State Senate is important but it's not like just because you live in a tiny town you think the local city council guy is super important. It's good that LA County is big and can do big things. But it would be nice if people understood that more than half of the services that they think are being provided by the State, the Feds, or the City are actually being provided by the county.
Well, the county in most cases using a lot of state or federal dollars, but yes.
I'd like bigger, more responsive counties, that had less piecemeal power and could act more like regional governments. If all the Bay were one county, it could do some cooler stuff (and contract for pony services).
Our city elections are in odd numbered years. Turnout is fairly low, but it's better than having a bunch of Fox News viewers all fired up to vote for the guy who shoots down drones picking someone based on the presumed ethnic origin of their name. Any bets, by the way, on whether the guy who shoots down drones can beat the Navy SEAL who seems to have padded his resume?
(I was just at my polling place collecting signatures to put Medicaid expansion on the ballot, so my faith in democracy is at an ebb right now. Nonetheless, it's still better than overpopulated underrepresented California.)
80 -- Bigger is ok, so long as you have enough representation so that candidates have to come to your house.
Four Californias, though, would be a great idea.
Whatevs. Maybe then we can be as awesome as Rhode Island. Or Montana.
Didn't some libertarian billionaire fucknut come out with some self-serving plan to split California into a bunch of separate states only a few months ago?
A very sparsely populated state is rather different than a densely populated area like LA. Lots of things need to be coordinated regionally. Trying to get Montana level representation in high density areas is a recipe for Nimbyism, chaos and ineffective government.
85 -- Yup. Also, it's an especially bad day to argue for a let's breakup California plan since California being big and having a big government is basically the best hope for the US on the most important issue in the world, climate change.
No chance of that, either way.
But Alta California, where you live, would get both its geographic and its proportional seats in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate. (Oh, did I leave something out in describing my plan?)
88.1 to 84. Although not very optimistic about 87 either: China being big is the solution there.
85 not meant to cast aspersions on CharleyCarp, whom I dig.
69: Upon reflection, I'm not sure I'd want that. The center of gravity of Massachusetts politics is actually pretty close to my personal preferences. Or, more accurately, my areas of dissatisfaction with the outcomes of Mass politics are orthogonal to the left-right continuum.
There's a related dilemma in Maryland politics right now: the Dem gubernatorial primary features a bog-standard (for MD) Dem candidate, the current Lt. Governor; a right-leaning candidate who's all about lowering corporate tax rates in order to better compete with neighboring states, and emphasizing accountability for teachers, i.e. a DINO; and one Heather Mizeur, the leftier candidate who is, let's face it, less compromised than the Lt. Governor Anthony Brown.
Maryland is not Massachusetts, and Mizeur is not, I don't think, seeking to introduce anything like a third party into the mix, but is just seeking to pull the state in a more progressive direction. From one perspective, that's hilarious: this is Maryland.
Anyway, I'm torn: I like Mizeur's positions a lot. A great many voters are impressed and convinced by her debate performances, and have signed on. The enthusiasm one hears on local public radio is remarkable.
Anthony Brown is in trouble at this point; if the left-leaning primary vote is split between him and Mizeur, the DINO could win. How would a fusion voting system affect all of this?
OT: Drain cleared and all holes in basement floor patched. One very shitty patch but the others weren't bad.
Our plumbing problem is fixed, too. Hooray for everybody!
Anthony Brown is in trouble at this point; if the left-leaning primary vote is split between him and Mizeur, the DINO could win. How would a fusion voting system affect all of this?
The Working Families Party would endorse one of them, and the other one would disappear to try again next time I guess.
Sir Kraab on WFP and Robert Halford on CA divisibility are right.
LA stands to gain some good county supervisors this round, including former Secy of Labor Hilda Solis (only nominally contested) and former Zelda on The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis Sheila Kuehl (contested chiefly by Bobby Shriver of those Shrivers, known for his short attention span and overlarge hedge).
Generally the LA County supes are in charge of human misery. The jails, child welfare, health services, etc. If you have to call the county for something, you're probably already fucked.
94: Yeah. The WFP would endorse Mizeur, and she'd easily get 50,000 votes, so they'd have a line in the next election, and would, in theory anyway -- at least as it's worked in NY -- have some leverage to move the party a bit leftward in future.
Sounds good to me.
Hell no on splitting up California, as Halford says, and also because the Central Valley as a state would be a new Mississippi.
because the Central Valley as a state would be a new Mississippi
Not as wet.
Except for the new Reagan Sea which will stretch from Sacramento to Stockton.
Everyone knows what I think about how to empower the unrepresented groups in a polity. Local, low turnout, low voter information off-year elections and primaries are a good demonstration of the weakness of elections.
Speaking of local/state politics, this article (which I already shared at the Other Place) is a fascinating glimpse of how things work in Alaska. I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but he obviously knows way more about this stuff than I do, and I learned a bunch of stuff that I didn't know before.
The guy who shoots drones did not prevail for the US House seat. Instead, the Rep race was won by the former Navy SEAL who's got some problems. Whether the Dem can take this seat is still something of a long shot -- but at least the stronger candidate won.
The young challenger endorsed by all the progressives knocked off the incumbent endorsed by Dem conservatives for county commission. The general isn't going to be any problem at all here, so we're moving in the right direction.
The man endorsed by all the progressives did not prevail against the woman for county attorney -- my guess is that people think having a woman in that job will get us past the rape thing, which isn't crazy (but the man and his supporters thought her role wrt the rape thing was murkier). There's no Republican in the race.
RightWingNutJob County, immediately to our south, seems to have largely (but not completely) rejected tea (including 2 of 3 county commissioners up for re-election). This is a big deal -- in addition to moderates challenging nutty incumbents, there was a concerted effort around the state to take down Republican incumbents willing to compromise with our Democratic governor, and almost all of these latter attempts failed.
Oh, and the anti-immigration guy, featured by SEK and some national publications based on some intemperate debate remarks, didn't crack 2% in the Republican primary.
In the open Assembly seat for a lot of the suburban East Bay, there was a well-connected and business-funded Democrat campaigning most visibly on banning BART strikes. He came in behind both the Republican candidate and the labor-supporting Democratic candidate, and will not be advancing to the November top-two race. Kind of heartening.
Question for Angelenos: how likely is it that Kuehl wins in November? Is it unknowable right now given the number of candidates?
There'll be 2 candidates in the general, her and Shriver. Hard to see the Duran voters breaking for Shriver, so I think she's very likely to win but not certain. She is great. I like to think that we have enough sense to not vote for a stuffed shirt whose only qualification is belonging to a dynasty (not even a goddamn California dynasty) but I guess Shriver could still win depending on how things break.
Right, I meant so many candidates who have now been knocked out.
I know so little about this race that I initially read "Duran voters" as synecdoche for "stalwart LA electorate".