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Jessica Ramos, a Democrat operating for mayor of New York, has had scathing phrases for Andrew Cuomo, the previous governor who can also be operating for mayor. In 2021, the state senator known as on Cuomo to resign or be impeached after a number of girls accused him of sexual harassment (he denies wrongdoing); the New York state legal professional basic additionally discovered that his administration had undercounted COVID deaths in nursing houses.
On the marketing campaign path this yr, Ramos known as Cuomo a “corrupt egomaniac” and a “remorseless bully.” She mentioned“I want I lived in a metropolis the place voters cared about girls getting harassed.” She additionally used the scandal to query his acuity: “I think about having to resign in shame will need to have actually taken a toll on, on the very least, on the very least, his ego, however most definitely his psychological well being,” Ramos mentionedincluding that town couldn’t “afford a Joe Biden second.”
This made it stunning when, earlier this month, Ramos “cross-endorsed” Cuomo within the metropolis’s ranked-choice voting system. (My colleague Annie Lowrey just lately detailed the sophisticated system.)
“We want severe governing. We want supply over dogma. Figuring out how you can govern issues, and that’s why I’m endorsing Andrew Cuomo for mayor at the moment,” Ramos mentioned at a joint rally with Cuomo. Making clear that this was a swipe on the leftist candidate Zohran Mamdani, she added that solely one of many mayoral candidates has the “expertise, toughness, and the information to steer New York for what’s about to return.” Ramos is hardly alone: Politico discovered that greater than 40 p.c of Cuomo’s high endorsements by elected officers within the mayoral race got here from individuals who publicly condemned him in 2021.
Voting within the Democratic mayoral main ends at the moment, and if the polls are proper, Cuomo and Mamdani are the doubtless winners. The ranked-choice voting system signifies that the result is troublesome to foretell; Cuomo has led most polls, although an Emerson Faculty ballot launched yesterday means that Mamdani may pull forward as soon as voters’ downballot selections are counted.
Cuomo’s robust place is a reminder that that is, for higher or worse—nearly definitely for worse—a golden age for comebacks. President Donald Trump is simply probably the most blatant instance. This has led journalists and political scientists to marvel whether or not scandals even matter anymore, or to bluntly assert that they don’t. Such despondency is comprehensible, however the scenario is considerably extra nuanced. The place main scandals used to appear like easy disqualifiers, ending or thwarting many careers, voters and politicians now deal with the taint of scandal as simply one other consider a cost-benefit evaluation.
Cuomo’s story illustrates how this has occurred. The primary related dynamic is a shift in how the general public views intercourse scandals. Beginning with President Invoice Clinton, politicians realized that they may intestine out a scandal relatively than step down, a path since adopted by Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Trump, and others. The #MeToo motion sophisticated that: Consensual-sex scandals could be survivable, however harassment and assault turned grounds for banishment. Cuomo was by no means convicted in a prison court docket (the one cost filed in opposition to him was dismissed in 2022), however an investigation by New York Legal professional Common Letitia James discovered that “Governor Cuomo sexually harassed present and former state workers in violation of each federal and state legal guidelines.” (Cuomo has admitted to cases that have been “misinterpreted as undesirable flirtation,” however continues to disclaim wrongdoing.)
A lot has modified in 4 years. In The New Yorker final week, Alexis Okeowo profiled Tina Johnsonone of many girls who accused the Alabama Republican Roy Moore, then a Senate candidate, of sexual assault in 2017 however who now feels forgotten. (Moore has denied the allegations and is suing Johnson and different accusers.) “The #MeToo motion had created a way of immense risk for survivors of sexual violence. However, in time, that sense appeared to fade,” Okeowo writes. “A basic fatigue with ‘cancellation’ took maintain, and conservative media shops and politicians weaponized this weariness in opposition to the motion.” Cuomo didn’t simply experience that wave: He participated in it, launching a podcast to complain about cancel tradition and paint himself as a sufferer.
Second, in a perverse manner, Cuomo doubtless benefited from the sheer variety of accusations in opposition to him, in addition to the nursing-home scandal. A 2021 paper by the political scientists Steven P. Nawara and Mandi Bailey, primarily based on a survey experiment, discovered that though scandals actual a toll on candidates, a number of scandals don’t damage them extra, as a result of the “cognitive load” required of voters to course of further tales is simply too nice. “This discovering is troubling from a perspective of democratic accountability, because it suggests voters are both incapable or unwilling to punish politicians concerned in a number of cases of wrongdoing past the preliminary hit that these candidates take to their evaluations after a single scandal,” they wrote.
A 3rd issue is the polarized, partisan panorama of politics at the moment. Many partisans really feel that each election isn’t just necessary however existential—if their facet loses, they might additionally lose their lifestyle. (They aren’t essentially improper!) You might be extra prepared to vote for a candidate you dislike should you imagine they’re extra “electable,” or should you discover their rival’s worldview not simply worse but additionally unacceptable. New York’s Democratic main is an intraparty affair, however it’s strongly polarized—for a way of this, see this New York Instances rundown of movie star poll rankings, which exhibits a Cuomo faction and a Mamdani/By no means Cuomo faction, together with many of the different candidates, in varied ranked orders. Or take a look at Ramos’s endorsement, by which she doesn’t absolve Cuomo however voices a worry that solely he can successfully shield town from Trump’s wrath. Different reluctant Cuomo backers have cited Mamdani’s leftist politics or inexperience as their motivation.
Trump embodies these dynamics simply as a lot as Cuomo does. His misdeeds instigated #MeToo, and later, he was a beneficiary of its fade; he’s embroiled in so many scandals that hardly anybody can preserve all of them in thoughts, and his political rise has each inspired and been fueled by hyperpartisan polarization. Varied issues ought to have disqualified Trump from a return to the White Home—most notable, his try and steal the 2020 election—however saying that the scandals didn’t damage him is simply too nihilistic. The Instances’ Nate Cohn has argued that given voter dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden and the economic system, Republicans may need performed higher in 2024 had they not been weighed down by Trump.
The truth that scandals can nonetheless damage a flawed politician, as a part of a broader consideration of pluses and minuses, is reassuring. Even so, one can think about a model of American politics by which voters really feel that they’ll maintain their leaders to a fair larger ethical customary.
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Listed here are 4 new tales from The Atlantic:
In the present day’s Information
- President Donald Trump admonished Iran and Israel for launching assaults after he introduced an finish to their preventing final evening. He added that the cease-fire stays “in impact.”
- An preliminary U.S. evaluation discovered that the American strikes that hit Iran’s nuclear amenities didn’t collapse their underground buildings and set again Iran’s nuclear program by just a few monthsin response to officers.
- Senator Invoice Cassidy, the chair of the Senate well being committee, mentioned yesterday that many appointees to Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine-advisory panel lack expertise.
Night Learn
The Laptop-Science Bubble Is Bursting
By Rose Horowitch
The job of the longer term may already be previous its prime. For years, younger folks in search of a profitable profession have been urged to go all in on pc science. From 2005 to 2023, the variety of comp-sci majors in the USA quadrupled.
All of which makes the newest batch of numbers so startling.
Extra From The Atlantic
Tradition Break
Watch. The 2002 movie 28 Days Later messed with the zombie-movie method; 28 Years Later (out now in theaters) takes it even additional, Shirley Li writes.
Learn. Fiction is usually pushed on allegedly reluctant males as a machine for empathy. “I learn it for a distinct motive,” Jeremy Gordon writes.
Stephanie Bai contributed to this article.
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