According to a national poll released on April 8, a majority of Democrats believe that the party should dump presumptive nominee Joe Biden and replace him on the presidential ticket with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Conducted by the conservative-leaning political action committee Club for Growth, 56 percent of Democrats agree that the party should nominate Cuomo instead of the former vice-president and current delegate leader Biden. All of Biden’s announced opponents in the Democrat Party have backed out, the last one being Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders last week.
“With every major news event, Democrats realize more and more how bad of a candidate Joe Biden is, and Democrats now preferring Cuomo is just another example,” Club for Growth vice-president of communications told the New York Post.
Overall, the poll found that 52 percent of likely voters thought that Biden should be replaced with Cuomo. The poll questioned 1,000 voters, including 361 Democrats, 349 Republicans, and 262 independents.
Demographics show that 66 percent of voters under 35 years old favored a switch to Cuomo. Fifty-eight percent of Hispanics, 57 percent of women, and 55 percent of African-Americans favored Cuomo over Biden as well.
Cuomo’s support seems to hinge on his response to the COVID-19 crisis, with 54 percent of respondents approving of Cuomo’s handling of the situation. Biden, who has been rather quiet on the subject, only registered 32 percent approval of his reaction to the situation. A full 35 percent disapproved of Biden’s response to the coronavirus situation.
The poll tracks with the opinion of many Democrats and journalists who believe that Biden is far too challenged a candidate to be able to take down Donald Trump in November. Former Sanders campaign aide Briahna Joy Gray tweeted on April 9, “Bernie was too kind to go after Biden, but it’s coming…Either Dem leadership cares more [about] maintaining a corporate status quo than getting rid of Trump, or they’re planning to replace Joe — adopting a pretty fast and loose relationship [with] representative Democracy.”
But Cuomo has said no on multiple occasions when asked if he will run. When asked by his brother Chris, a CNN talking head, Governor Cuomo categorically stated “no” when pressed as to if he would run. Cuomo also told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that he has no interest in running.
“No. I know presidential politics. I was there in the White House with Clinton. I was there with Gore. No, I’m at peace with who I am and what I’m doing,” Cuomo told Dowd.
But while Cuomo, who endorsed Biden early — in January of 2019 — has repeatedly said no to the media and Democrat Party apparatchiks, will he be able to say no if he believes that the people are behind him?
Polls are non-binding, of course, but the Club for Growth survey shows that there is significant interest among Democrat voters for a Cuomo run. Despite Biden’s delegate count, could the Democrats actually claim that the people actually want Cuomo instead of Biden and nominate the New York governor instead?
For it to happen without acrimony, Joe Biden would have to step aside voluntarily, which doesn’t seem plausible since the former Delaware senator has coveted the presidency since the 1980s.
But 2020 has been a year of implausible things. Through Democrat and media pressure or even his family’s or his own sense of well-being, Biden could conceivably be coaxed into stepping aside for the “good of the country” and for his own good as well.
Photo: AP Images
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects, with a primary focus on the ongoing anthropogenic climate-change hoax and cultural issues. He can be reached at [email protected]
