Andrew Cuomo laughing at how easily the Working Families Party surrendered its endorsement to him.
Seriously hilarious.
The New York Working Families Party is calling on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run for president in 2016.
“Senator Warren is the nation's most powerful voice for working families fighting against a set of rules written by and for Wall Street," Director Bill Lipton said in a statement on Sunday. "That's the debate we want to see, and that's why we're urging Senator Warren to run for President."
So adorable! The same crowd that backed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year and abandoned progressives fighting to oust state Senate members of the Republican-backing Independent Democratic Caucus, is now going to pretend to fight against Wall Street?
Remember, at the time Andrew Cuomo was showing real weakness in polling, and was desperate to roll up support from the Left in order to show electoral strength ahead of a future presidential bid. Rather than help crystalize support from the left by recruiting and backing a legit challenger, the WFP decide instead to jump back into bed with Cuomo.
Because they're fighting so hard against rules written by Wall Street yadda yadda yadda.
But this is an easy call for them! They get to build up their list with a phony draft effort, while Elizabeth Warren makes clear over and over again that she has no interest and will not run for president. Period. Underscored. Bolded and highlighted.
If the WFP was legitimately interested in a debate, they would help draft a credible and real challenger to Hillary. As Joan Walsh notes:
In addition to advancing the assumption that the Clinton campaign won’t be progressive enough, before she’s even declared her candidacy, the hype about Warren serves to obscure the depth and breadth of the new populist movement afoot among Democrats in Congress. Why not draft Sen. Bernie Sanders, who says he’ll run if he believes he has organizational backing? Or other progressive senators like Sherrod Brown or Al Franken or Kirsten Gillibrand? Elizabeth Warren is a star in her own right; she doesn’t particularly need this kind of help.
The only way this "draft someone who is definitely NOT running" nonsense makes sense is if you assume WFP is doing this to build their own list and bolster their own fundraising efforts, as opposed to making a serious and credible effort to find a primary challenger for Hillary.
Having hitched the wagon to Andrew Cuomo to ill-effect, WFP now wants to see if latching on to Elizabeth Warren will help wash off some of that stench. And no, it won't. Self-serving publicity stunts rarely do.
12:35 PM PT: I wrote this last summer, and it's just as pertinent today.