16 March 2022: Opinion - Cuomo Disgraced. Not Cancelled.

Andrew Cuomo Thinks He Got “Canceled.” Actually, the Word Is “Disgraced.”

This opinion piece by Ross Barkan appeared in the very left-leaning Jacobin magazine. Here's the timeline's obligatory selection of excerpts:

Andrew Cuomo, New York’s disgraced former governor, is hoping to mount a political comeback. But his posturing as a victim of “cancel culture” can’t change the fact that his comeuppance was richly deserved....

The open secret of Cuomo’s eleven years in power is that he was, often, a lousy governor.

He failed to contain the initial spread of COVID, dithering until it was too late, and engineered an egregious cover-up of deaths in nursing homes, which helped lead to his downfall....

Beyond the fact that Cuomo is so unrepentant for his behavior, what makes his attempted comeback dubious is his lack of ideas. Cuomo has nothing to offer and nothing to say. He has no genius strategy for helping Democrats avoid a midterm wipeout — he sabotaged Democrats in his own state and won elections comfortably with the sort of fundraising practices that are forbidden in Congress. He cannot speak credibly on governing or election reform because New York, for much of his tenure, had some of the worst voter laws in America. Cuomo was a master at consolidating power for himself, and occasionally he did wield it for better ends. More often than not, though, he simply acted on petty grievances and stymied real change.

Which is worse: the cover-up of the excess COVID deaths at New York's nursing homes or the policies Cuomo enacted that contributed to them?