New York – Andrew Cuomo for vice president in 2012? That was the provocative prediction made last week by former San Francisco Mayor and onetime California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown Jr., widely regarded on the West Coast as one of the savviest political analysts around.
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Brown, who writes a well-read column for the San Francisco Examiner, was touching on widespread speculation that Vice President Joe Biden is not exactly an asset and might be dumped from his post by an increasingly nervous and poll-challenged President Obama when he declared:
“Here’s a prediction: Vice President Biden moves over to secretary of state, with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo stepping in to bring new blood to the Obama re-election campaign.
“He’s a big name, a big-state governor. And a Democrat who is taking on the issue of pubic-employee salaries and pensions. Plus, he looks good,” Brown wrote.
A source close to Cuomo said the governor was flattered by Brown’s observations, “especially his saying that he looks good,” but insisted the governor had no plans other than to work hard during the 3½ years remaining in his term.
Read more in NY Post by FREDRIC U. DICKER
The choice of Cuomo would be a brilliant tactical choice by Obama and would attract both social and economic conservative voters among independents and Republicans. We saw how Cuomo mopped the floor with that dreche from Buffalo who tried to run on a “values’ platform and attempted to paint Cuomo as an immoral pro-abortion, pro-gay leftist. The truth prevailed and Cuomo was able to make the teaparty types in NYS and their yiddeshe comrades (aka Rav Yehuda Levin, z’tl) wish they had never taken him on.