New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference alongside the National Guard at the Jacob Javits Center that will house a temporary hospital in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, Monday, March 23, 2020, in New York. New York City hospitals are just 10 days from running out of “really basic supplies,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said late Sunday. De Blasio has called upon the federal government to boost the city’s quickly dwindling supply of protective equipment. The city also faces a potentially deadly dearth of ventilators to treat those infected by the coronavirus. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

I think one of the saddest things in presidential politics is when a candidate for leader of the free world has to pick someone as a vice president to make him look serious. I understand picking a woman or three-toed redhaird Eskimo pygmy to appeal to a particular demographic or voting bloc, but when you pick someone to convince America that you have a non-idiot within hailing distance of the Oval Office, it is sort of embarrassing for just about everyone. Such was the case when George W. Bush…a successful two-term governor of Texas…picked Dick Cheney and when Barack Obama…an unaccomplished, do nothing, one-term senator…picked Joe Biden to be, in the vernacular of political reporters, ‘the adult in the room.’ News flash. If you need a babysitter maybe you shouldn’t be running for the presidency.

So imagine how Andrew Cuomo felt when he read in the media today that Joe Biden was saying he would be the chief of staff in a Biden White House. Not vice president, because that has been promised to someone with sniffable hair. Not secretary of defense. Not secretary of state. Chief of freakin staff.

Why is Biden doing this? Because after his disastrous debate performances and utterly bizarre remote address from his ‘shadow government’ yesterday he has to convince the American public he’s up to doing more than slurping his cream-of-wheat. Andrew Cuomo, though given to bouts of wide-eyed panic, has been a good partner with the Trump administration and seems to have a better grip on what needs to be done than any other major Democrat.

The answer is, he wouldn’t.

https://twitter.com/danarubinstein/status/1242459839231594499

With the SS Biden nearly dead in the water, there is zero reason for Cuomo to expend his political capital backing not only a loser but a loser of such loserliness that even other abject losers are jealous.

Unless Trump really manages to screw the pooch in the next six months, he will be re-elected. Cuomo’s best play is to ensure that he’s not associated in any way, shape, or form with that trainwreck, and focus on the open election in 2024.

His second best play is to be waiting in the wings if, as I more and more think will happen, if a move is made to replace Biden as the nominee either through convention shenanigans or, Torricelli-esque, once the general election is in full swing.