OPINION:
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made headlines this week claiming that he was an undocumented immigrant. He also claimed that he was gay, black, Jewish, and a woman seeking an abortion.
As a New Yorker, I am a Muslim. I am a Jew. I am Black. I am gay. I am a woman seeking to control her body. We are one New York. pic.twitter.com/peOL9x2ltl
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) January 29, 2017
In other words, Andrew Cuomo made headlines for perfectly articulating the Democrats’ identity politics playbook for the past several elections and, apparently, for the 2018 midterms.
Cuomo will now make the rounds and kiss the rings of leaders in each of the important interest groups declared in his litany of protected classes. He has already paid homage to Al Sharpton and the National Action Network by promising to grant voting rights to recently paroled felons. No doubt he will soon be making the pilgrimage to Planned Parenthood.
But as one reflects on the long list of aggrieved groups that Governor Cuomo aligned himself this week, it’s noteworthy that one group is not included as a category worthy of the New York Governor’s compassion. At no point did Governor Cuomo say “I am a working class blue-collar American.”
Demographers and political geniuses for the past several decades have proclaimed the Republican party will soon be obsolete because of changing ethnic, racial and religious identities in America. This was certainly the philosophy behind Hillary Clinton’s political strategy in 2016. They openly encouraged the Trump candidacy during the Republican primaries because it alienated the list of people articulated by Cuomo this week.
That strategy proved to be misguided.
Not only did Trump win the presidency by appealing to the forgotten middle class blue-collar workers in such stalwart Democratic states as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but he also got a larger portion of the Latino vote than Mitt Romney did in 2012.
Certainly 2018 is not the same as 2016, and there are many other factors at play for the midterm elections tipping the scale blue. It is certainly telling, however, that even after the lessons of 2016 have been learned, Cuomo and most other Democrats still feel the need to pander to the mosaic of aggrieved groups that make up the fractured base of their party.
The more time Cuomo and other Democrats spend carving out special rights and new giveaways, the less time they are spending talking about manufacturing jobs and economic opportunity for voters who don’t align themselves solely with any of those groups and merely call themselves “Americans”.
A gifted Republican, even in blue state New York, could take advantage of such a political misstep. In 2016 a total novice did and he made history.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.