Artur Davis: Cuomo and the Coming Democratic Dilemma

The New Republic’s recent piece on Andrew Cuomo’s presidential ambitions will rankle most conservatives at first glance: its description of the New York Governor as a centrist seems like an ill-fitting label for an unabashed champion of gay marriage, sweeping gun control, decriminalizing marijuana possession, and lately, eroding restrictions on third trimester abortions. But the article is important for a variety of reasons. First, of all the likely Democratic possibilities should Hillary Clinton stay on the sidelines, it is Cuomo who comes closest to Barack Obama’s raw skill and resilience, Cuomo who is best positioned to match either Clinton or Obama as a fundraising machine, and it is the governor who is most likely to reprise Obama’s strength with the metropolitan professionals and suburbanites who are crucial in the big state primaries that will decide the nomination. Short term, the article is illustrative of two points that might explain why extending the Democratic run for another presidential cycle is a more dicey proposition than the gloom about demographics and infighting on the right suggests.

The first point is the extent to which the 21st century brand of centrism in the Democratic Party omits even a scintilla of social conservatism.  Cuomo’s stances on social issues may be decidedly to the left of the ground Obama staked out in two presidential campaigns (was it just five ago that Obama was declaring his religious reservations about gay marriage and soft-pedaling his views on abortion?) but they are already orthodoxy among the activists who will dictate the outcomes of caucuses and primaries in 2016 (even in states like South Carolina and Alabama, where the steady migration of conservative Democrats has left primary electorates not much distinguishable from an Iowa or a Maryland).

It’s a shift, though, that will produce a platform and more importantly a nominating campaign that will not resemble the calibrated positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control which Democrats relied on for a generation. Much as 2012 was an object lesson in the Republican shift to the right on subjects like immigration and the distrust in grassroots GOP ranks of every element of Obama’s agenda, the 2016 Democratic race will be a template of what liberal politics sound like when their base has a monopoly on the primaries.

And the reframing of the Democratic Party as an unrestrained defender of social liberalism will have uncertain consequences for the white working class share of their coalition—the share that actually accounted for Obama’s 2012 wins in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, after all four states had elected Republican governors just two years earlier. As Ruy Teixera, who is ordinarily bullish on the prospect of an enduring Democratic coalition, has pointed out, socially progressive politics may no longer be toxic, but they also have no demonstrated appeal to white blue collars who prioritize the manufacturing jobs and wage growth that Obama barely touched in his inaugural speech or State of the Union.

And it is possible that as liberals assert themselves on themes that they barely mentioned in the economy driven environment in 2008 and 2012, that working class voters will be the leading edge of any gathering cultural backlash around, say, guns or reviving third trimester abortions. In addition, the next election will happen against one of two backdrops, either of which could end up disadvantaging Democrats. Either a worst case, another four years of tepid growth accompanied by continued angst that specific policies like Obamacare haven’t slowed premiums and may have cost jobs, or a best case that has its own risks: a return to robust growth would only divert attention from 2012’s focus on economic fairness. Both scenarios will mean that the thorough-going social liberal who emerges as the next Democratic nominee, either Cuomo or someone who has managed to outflank him, will have to fend for blue collar whites (including conservative Catholics) without the competitive edge Obama enjoyed in running two surrogate campaigns against George W. Bush’s record.

At the same time, as the New Republic suggests, the reformer impulses that have distinguished Cuomo’s record in Albany and given him a genuine claim to the political center, may well end up not influencing a Cuomo presidential platform in any real manner. For example, it will be hard for Cuomo to win his party’s nomination by assembing a combination of national positions akin to his budget reforming, cost-cutting maneuvers and his toughness on public sector unions, both of which have enabled him to garner, until recently, eye-popping approval numbers with Republicans.

Reining in spending nationally would require engaging entitlements, which is a more complicated political beast than reworking pension contributions and trimming fat in Albany. As commentators like Ross Douthat have pointed out, there are major differences between the space for reining in public-sector unions and the tougher terrain of selling reductions of entitlements that are universal. Taking on, for example, federal employees is a non-starter for a Democrat who will need to replicate Obama’s strength in the  suburbs of northern Virginia, and the issue has never gotten much national traction anyway. There is certainly no substantive or rhetorical evidence that Cuomo is inclined to challenge the liberal consensus that entitlements are foundations of the social contract that should not be seriously disturbed.

Nor is there much likelihood that any serious Democratic politician will trade blows with the teachers unions on the national level. It would be an unusual gamble for  Cuomo, whose boldness in New York is eased by a dearth of any credible Democratic rivals, to hand an opponent the one issue that could undercut him with a prime element of the Democratic base. Instead, it is probable that Cuomo would mimic Obama’s middle ground of soft funding incentives for local school reforms, some enthusiasm for charter schools, lock-step opposition to vouchers, mild sympathy for tenure reform but only when it is blessed and watered down by the unions.

It would not at all be surprising if the exigencies of winning his party’s nomination meant that the centrist aspects of Cuomo’s gubernatorial profile, the ones that might stamp him as something other than a standard interest group liberal, ended up being shelved in the same way as Mitt Romney’s fear of the Tea Party surge motivated him to ignore his governing successes in Massachusetts.

So, the upshot is that even a genuinely compelling politician like Cuomo would offer a Democratic politics that is a dangerous inverse of Obama’s formula. More unabashedly liberal than Obama on social issues, without the benefit of an electorate having strong memories of a financial meltdown during Republican rule, and in a context where the Republican nominee in 2016 will almost certainly be running on a stronger reform agenda.  The odds that it will work are much weaker that today’s Democratic cheerleaders assume.

(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from OfficialArturDavis.com)