Democrats’ standing is at a record low nationally. To inch their way up from their nadir, Democrats must demonstrate the basics of governing.
As New York City slouches toward the Democratic mayoral primary in June, a subway safety plan proposed by the front-runner, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, raises the main question for the city’s ruling party: Why is it so hard to accomplish obvious things? Why have so many candidates and elected officials resisted common-sense ideas that not only could work, but have worked in the past?
Mr. Cuomo’s subway safety plan, being released Tuesday morning, is 20 pages of footnoted detail, a smorgasbord of ideas, some good, some not so good, some with a credible path to execution, some not.
But the plan illustrates why Mr. Cuomo, despite his known demerits, is ahead of his more progressive rivals. As the only major candidate running against Mayor Eric Adams as a moderate, Mr. Cuomo acknowledges three obvious facts and sets one clear and attainable standard that New York used to come closer to achieving: “The transit system exists for transit use only,” the plan says, not as a homeless shelter, not as a haven for the severely mentally ill.
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here. Nicole is the author of Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car, available now.
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