Andrew Cuomo's path to the presidency in 2020

[ag]

The potential corruption ...

I mean, given all the real corruption of the next four years, a talk of "potential corruption" would sound facetious.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Step 1: Get all the money
Step 2: Get all the advertisements
Step 3: Win New Hampshire
Step 4: Win the Democratic Party
Step 5: Win the GE with even more money

That worked out so well for Jeb!

It worked out well for Clinton '16 and Romney '12. It's a decent, though not certain, strategy; it's very good for establishing yourself as the early frontrunner (even Jeb! managed that) but then you still have to hold on to that position, and the ability to do that will depend on the quality of your message and on the quality of your opposition. Jeb! failed at this unusually massively, since his message was incoherent and the quality of his opposition was unusually high, so that he managed to fall to fifth place in polling while still being an order of magnitude ahead of everyone else in money terms.

But there is a circular aspect to this.  Early frontrunners like Clinton and Romney got lots of elite support and money and were able to hire A-list talent for their campaigns because the party elites thought they were going to win anyway.  If you're viewed as the frontrunner, then elites want to join you so they can suck up to you and be on the winning team.  But Cuomo is not viewed as the 2020 Dem. frontrunner, and it's not clear to me how he's going to convince people that he is the frontrunner.

Now, he does have one thing going for him, which is that he's the sitting governor of New York.  And so he'll manage to get decent fundraising #s even if he's at 1% in the polls, simply because so many rich people have business interests in New York, and will want to gain favor with Cuomo even if they don't think he'll ever be president.

So, OK, his campaign isn't going to be as poor as that of Chafee or Gilmore.  But I doubt it'll actually be enough to give him the largest fundraising haul in the field, nor enough to make him a strong contender.

I don't like the guy, but he's got a real shot.  He's tried and true, he's got accomplishments (of questionable value, I grant you), and he's not up for re-election.  He can run as an incumbent.  

He's Italian; that'll make him a "first".

He's Catholic; that'll make him a "second" and the "first since JFK".  Think about it; the only other Catholic to be a Presidential nominee besides JFK is the other JFK (John Forbes Kerry).  He'll generate just about the same amount of enthusiasm Kerry generated, but that could be enough if Trump is sinking.

No one cares about that type of identity politics in 2017 and won't in 2020 either. They also didn't even in 2012, I don't remember ever hearing about Rick Santorum being Italian being brought up and being Catholic was only mentioned as a side note into talking about how he was winning evangelicals so strongly. Also the only time Catholicism was brought up in regards to John Kerry was when right wing Catholics bashed him over abortion.

The Catholic thing isn't that much of a big deal as it was in 1960.  The type of preachers who warned us about "Rome" and "the Pope" are now folks who have found common cause on social issues with at least the conservative Catholics in America.

The Italian thing, that's something else.  Italians are socially conservative, and intensely patriotic, but they are also very proud of being Italian.  Perhaps because of the unfairly negative light in which many Italians view themselves as having been seen by others in media, an Italian as President is a big deal to many Italian-Americans. 

In 2008 there was Rudy Giuliani's campaign: epic fail
In 2012 there was Rick Santorum, and no one cared about him being Italian, plus he lost the most heavily Italian parts of the country to Romney.
In 2016 there was Chris Christie, and his campaign went nowhere.

Italian identity politics don't seem to be a thing.

Giuliani's campaign wasn't an "epic fail".  The GOP was very much in a "Who's the true conservative?" mode then, and Giuliani was only a conservative on 9/11-Homeland Security issues.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

He spent $60 million and won one delegate. That's an epic fail almost on Jeb levels.

[Phony Moderate]

Given that he's despised even by many of those who tend towards supporting 'establishment' Democrats, er...

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

I was way bad when a Andrew Cuomo supporter. And Cuomo is a skilled politician and plays hardball just like Trump does.  If Dems can get Tulsi Gabbard or Julian Castro or any Democrat to be tough on Trump, the way Cuomo will do it, we will win in 2020.