Progressives Should Weigh In on de Blasio vs. Cuomo

It’s not every day that a sitting mayor of New York accuses the governor of New York of governing out of spite and a desire for “revenge for some perceived slight,” but there you have it. And there’s not much that Governor Cuomo can say about it, given that he’s just admitted in a press conference that he’s been anonymously trashing de Blasio in the New York Daily Press.

Now, all of this might seem like complete inside baseball and not really something that non-political professionals should care about, but the stakes in this feud are quite real. Cuomo’s ongoing feud with de Blasio has had major impacts on public policy from preventing New York City from taxing its wealthy to pay for universal Pre-K, to blocking renewal (let alone reform of) of rent control for millions of New Yorkers, to mandating that developers include affordable housing that’s desperately needed, to the fight for public education against the privatization agenda, to a higher minimum wage for hundreds of thousands of NYC workers, and on and on.

So here’s why I think progressives need to publicly and vocally back de Blasio on this:

First, I think there’s been a lamentable tendency among progressives to write off Bill de Blasio for not particularly well-articulated reasons. Despite a policy record of pushing through universal Pre-K, paid sick leave, a living wage ordinance, municipal IDs, ending stop-and-frisk despite a huge pushback (although it’s completely fair to criticize de Blasio for clinging to broken windows policing), proposing a “Vision Zero” program to end traffic fatalities, and proposing huge investments in affordable and public housing, increasing the minimum wage, and on and on to basically include the entire progressive agenda, the collective response from a lot of progressives has been to shrug their shoulders.

This isn’t good strategy – just as it’s important for progressives to back Elizabeth Warren in internal fights (say with Obama on TPP) in order to push the Democratic Party in a progressive direction, we need to reward elected officials who go out on a limb to enact our agenda with our approval and support, both to ensure that they keep on keeping on and pour encourager les autres.  De Blasio’s coming up for re-election in 2017, and he’s going to need progressive support to win.

Second, even if de Blasio wasn’t a progressive tribune, we should still back him against Cuomo, since (along with Rahm Emanuel) Cuomo is one of the biggest names on the right wing of the Democratic Party. The same principle that applies to progressives rewarding our friends also holds for our enemies. Cuomo has attempted to block virtually all forms of progressive reform in New York, and has systematically attempted to make sure that Republicans retain control of the New York Senate, up to and including abetting turncoat conservative Democrats. Yes, there’s a central irony in that Cuomo probably wouldn’t even be in a position to do any of this if de Blasio hadn’t intervened to ensure his nomination by the Working Families Party, but does anyone who thinks that was a mistake really think that it will be easier to defeat Cuomo’s bid for a third term in 2018 if de Blasio is defeated in 2017?

Third, I think it could help on policy terms. As we’ve seen with the minimum wage (and arguably on 421a), when Cuomo feels that his left flank is threatened, he’s willing to move left (albeit as little as possible). Right now, New York’s state government is convulsed over renewing rent control and reforming 421a (a major tax credit for developers) to include more ambitious requirements for affordable housing. A big part of that convulsion is that Cuomo’s been quietly taking a position somewhat to the right of the Senate Republicans while publicly backing the AFL-CIO’s call for prevailing wages. If more daylight is thrown on how conservative Cuomo’s actually being, he might feel the need to come to a better deal to neutralize the issue.

So tweet or something.