By Post Editorial Board
November 12, 2016
The race for the 2020 Democratic nomination is on, and New York has two big contenders: Gov. Cuomo and . . . Mayor de Blasio.
Yes, they need to win re-election here (and avoid indictments). But they’re very high on the very short list of Democratic national talent (assuming George Clooney, Sean Penn, Jay Z and the like don’t decide to “pull a Trump”).
Cuomo is obvious: a Catholic big-state governor with national experience and proven fund-raising prowess, fiscally responsible but a ground-breaker on gay rights, gun control, stopping fracking and other hot Democratic issues.
Bob McManus speculated in Friday’s Post that White House ambitions will push Cuomo to the left in the months ahead; others have guessed the opposite. But no one doubts that ambition will push him.
Post readers may be shocked we’d even imagine a President de Blasio. But, objectively, he may be progressives’ only 2020 hope.
It wasn’t just the backing (and deck-stacking) of the party establishment that pushed Hillary Clinton past Bernie Sanders this year — it was also black voters, especially in the South.
Sen. Liz Warren is whiter than Bernie — heck, she’s whiter than the paper The Post is printed on. (The Native American blood doesn’t show.) De Blasio, by contrast, is mayor thanks to African-American support in the 2013 primaries — and Dante still looks great in TV ads.
Democrats also need enthusiastic black support in the general. It was key to President Obama’s victories — and the drop in turnout this year, key to Clinton’s loss. But the party’s bench doesn’t hold any actual African-Americans this cycle. New York’s mayor may be the closest it can get.
By the way, he leads a government larger than those of 48 states.
The implications for local politics are fierce: The de Blasio-Cuomo feud may get even more intense — or fade, as each man realizes the rivalry could destroy both their 2020 hopes.
Right now, everyone’s in shock. We don’t fault the mayor for responding, when asked if Hillary Clinton was the wrong choice for his party this year, “I’m going to need a few more days to come up with the kind of answers that I feel confident in.” There’s a lot to figure out.
And each has to find a way to work with the first born-in-New-York president since FDR. The state and city get a lot of cash from the feds — funds at risk from all manner of Trump reforms.
On the other hand, the president-elect wants to build, build, build — and New York’s “infrastructure” needs are dire, from the Gateway project to build a new rail tunnel under the Hudson to what Veep Joe Biden rightly called our Third World airports. Maybe Cuomo was right to hold off on figuring out how to pay for the new Tappan Zee Bridge…
Then there’s the other New Yorker in the equation: incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — the local pol who actually got a call from the president-elect after his victory.
Thanks to Senate rules like the filibuster, Schumer could hold up much of the Trump agenda. On the other hand, he has a ton of Senate seats up in 2018, many in red states. Notably, he was among the first New York officials to publicly say he hopes for a working relationship with the president-elect.
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