David Sirota, a former aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign, said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) soaring approval ratings during the coronavirus pandemic are partially due to the country’s politics becoming more “shallow.”
A recent poll showed Cuomo has 81 percent approval among New Yorkers as the state battles COVID-19.
“It says that our politics have gotten pretty shallow,” Sirota said on Hill.TV’s “Rising” Friday.
“When you couple it with what Cuomo has done, not moving as quickly to take the steps that needed to be taken, cutting Medicaid in the middle of a pandemic, putting forward an austerity budget that cuts basic public services, public education and the like while he repeatedly refuses Democratic legislation to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires in New York,” he added.
“When you put all that and the policies together, you ask yourself, how can Andrew Cuomo be so popular?” Sirota asked. “And what you’re left with is the fact that if you’re on television making declarative statements and if you happen to have a brother who runs a major show on CNN and get to banter with your brother on CNN, then you can still be popular in the middle of an emergency that you aren’t handling all that well.”
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