“Republicans would cut this nation in half and call it recovery…”
by digby
I think this was probably the most electrifying speech I ever heard in real time:
Speechwriter Andrei Cherny writes:
A hundred years from now, if there is one speech that people will study and remember from a Democratic politician in the last quarter of the 20th century, it will rightly be Cuomo’s 1984 address. It is hard to overstate the impact it had on a generation of the party’s speechwriters, strategists and policy thinkers. You can see it clearly in New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign against the “two New Yorks” and John Edwards’ description of the “two Americas.” After learning of Cuomo’s passing, Jon Favreau — President Obama’s chief speechwriter for most of his presidency — commented on Twitter that the “1984 Convention speech is in my top five of all time.” The same, it is safe to say, goes for almost every Democratic politician and speechwriter. And, aside from its rhetoric, the formative power of Cuomo’s call silently shapes debates over the party’s strategy and future to this day.
And then he points out that the speech was all about celebrating Democratic achievements of the past and not about the future, which he claims has crippled liberal politics ever since. I can’t say that I agree. It was a beautiful, soaring speech that made people want to belong to this tribe of average working citizens engaged in a great democratic experiment. I think we need more of that, not less. Instead, what we’ve gotten for years from most Democrats is a laundry list of goals and a litany of 10 point plans to “improve the economy” and other abstract concepts. There are some politicians who make that work — Bill Clinton in particular. But it’s rare. For the most part Democratic rhetoric has either been a dry socket or an empty exercise in feel good, self-love sloganeering. Cuomo’s rhetoric was something special.
RIP.
.