Almost every Democrat in New York’s congressional delegation — including well-known figures like Reps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jerrold Nadler — have called on Governor Andrew Cuomo to step down in light of a number of allegations of impropriety and a burgeoning COVID-19 death toll scandal. But Cuomo is denying the allegations, saying he won’t “bow to cancel culture.”
13 House Democrats have called on Cuomo to step down following a series of allegations of sexual harassment. Cuomo is also fending off outrage about his administration’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic. New York’s attorney general said the state had deliberately undercounted nursing home deaths by several thousand in January, an allegation Cuomo more or less acknowledged. Still, both the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that Cuomo’s aides had dramatically lowered the July death toll. An investigation into the allegations is underway.
This derailed much of Cuomo’s 2020 buzz and made him an unpopular figure in his own party, but he said the Democrats calling on him to step down are getting ahead of themselves.
“The people of New York should not have confidence in a politician who takes a position without knowing any facts and substance,” he said, musing that “politicians take positions for all sorts of reasons, including political expediency.”
“Part of this is that I’m not part of the political club,” he said. “And you know what? I’m proud of it.”
By blaming the whole thing on cancel culture, Cuomo was able to use one of the modern political arena’s biggest bogeymen as a shield, attempting to flip the narrative by portraying himself as a victim and the women speaking out as the real aggressors. It’s a simple trick, and lots of people are getting in on the grift. If you make cancel culture into the bad guy, then you can just put any and all criticism into the “cancel culture” box and, poof, you’ve invalidated it. What might have been justified consequences for your own actions is now just “cancel culture run amok” — a “get out of jail free” card if ever there was one.
But you can’t sweep all six women who’ve accused Cuomo of sexual harassment and the nursing home deaths under the rug along with dozens of current and former employees who say Cuomo’s office was a toxic and chaotic place to work for everyone — particularly young women. If you want to hide behind “cancel culture” as many, many public figures have done, you’ve got to make sure that the crowd that’s coming for you doesn’t have receipts.
