Andrew Cuomo — the next purple governor of NY?

So when is the last time you heard a truly progressive Democrat say the
following (I am paraphrasing, thus no quotation marks):

I believe we may have reached a critical mass as Democrats: It’s time for a
freeze on government spending, a freeze on all taxes, and we should seriously
look at tax cuts to encourage private-sector job growth. And regarding the Tea
Partiers: I share their anger, I share their frustration, and we need to
address their concerns about big government and high deficits.

 
Last week, I heard such a progressive Democrat talking this way — New York
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. I was at a Washington fundraiser for Cuomo, whom
I have known for many years but especially when he served as HUD secretary
under President Clinton.
 
Andrew Cuomo is an unusual person and unusual politician. He has experienced
the pain of disappointment and defeat in a previous effort to run for governor,
and the slings and arrows of New York politics and the New York media. Yet he
has come out of that tough experience all the better — in my view, graceful and
gracious under fire, sticking to the issues, staying on the high road, refusing
to get into the muck where his Republican opponent seems to like to dwell.
 
As President Clinton’s HUD secretary, Cuomo proved that working with business
in “free enterprise zones,” through lower taxes and creating private market
incentives, could attract housing for the poor and middle class.
 
The last Democrat who used the kind of uplifting and unifying language I heard
from Andrew Cuomo last week was presidential candidate Barack Obama. That
message of a “new politics” that transcended “blue” and “red” state
categorizations is what drew so many people, especially young people, including
my oldest son, to support Barack Obama for president even before he decided to
run.
 
President Obama’s candidacy also drew significant support from normally Republican
members of the business community. These are individuals who are concerned
about Democratic liberal orthodoxy that seems reflexively anti-private sector
and prefers government-run programs over private-sector activity.
 
They knew that President Obama was liberal on government serving as a social
safety net and leveler of the playing field of equal opportunity for all — after
all, that was why he chose to be a Democrat and not a Republican. But they saw
President Obama as believing in the unusual ideological hybrid that led so many
of them to support President Clinton — belief in the private sector as the
engine of economic growth and job creation, and minimum interference and
regulation to allow it to thrive.
 
Clearly — and recent remarks by President Obama suggest he realizes this — President
Obama and we Democrats have lost that message. We have allowed the conservative
Republican message machine — and give them credit, they have done a good job — of
labeling Democrats as the “old liberalism” of Big Government and Tax and Spend.

 
By the way, the same was the case for President Clinton between 1992-94,
followed by the Gingrich takeover of the House in the 1994 elections. But then
President Clinton in early 1995 made a pivot — and focused on welfare reform, a
balanced budget process, and — after standing up to Speaker Gingrich’s threats
to shut down the government unless basic social safety-net programs such as
Medicare were substantially cut — ended up with balanced budgets, a $1 trillion
surplus and a 65 percent job approval rating by the end of his second term.
 
I believe Andrew Cuomo’s election as governor of New York — which is likely to
happen — will provide important support for President Obama and the national
Democratic Party leadership to make the same pivot.
 
Andrew Cuomo can prove by his election and service as New York’s governor — as
can President Obama after the November elections, regardless of the results — that
it is possible to be both pro-business and progressive, anti-big government
while setting priorities that help the poor and the middle class.
 
Is that asking too much? Unrealistic? I don’t think so. My evidence? I just
described the Bill Clinton presidency and the successful Barack Obama
presidential campaign.