Weigel

For the Democrat Who Hates Unions, Go Cuomo

Fred Dicker’s non-scoop about Andrew Cuomo as a 2012 vice presidential candidate – he cites three sources, one unnamed, one Willie Brown, none of them in the White House – is so stupid that I won’t link it. I’ll link Ed Morrissey instead, because he at least adds a question mark to the headline, like a responsible blogger.

Why discuss it at all? Not because Cuomo will run for national office before 2016. He won’t. (He needs to stick around through 2015 to defeat NOM’s sneaky marriage repeal plan, remember?) It’s because it reminded me of a conversation I had last week with a Democratic statewide elected from the Midwest. He asked me what I thought of Cuomo as a candidate in 2016; I said Cuomo would face real problems from labor unions, compared to some other Democratic hopefuls, given the deals he’s been cutting in New York – salary freezes, carve-outs for some unions and not others, etc. This Democrat told me that he liked Cuomo for exactly that reason, and that the Democratic party, going from here, couldn’t rely on unions and promise them everything they wanted.

This was a little jarring to hear. Around the same time, Joe Biden was telling Teamsters to stick with Democrats because when Republicans won in the states, they were tearing up all the contracts and gains unions had made. How many Democrats think that’s not tenable anymore? If there’s some way to fund the Democratic Party at current levels with union activism replaced by donations from grateful gay donors… no, I don’t think the math adds up. But there are certainly some Democrats thinking about this.