A very sad start to the new year.
Mario Cuomo was the last man standing, the last still alive American political hero I had. What other post-Sixties American politician asked "where had the sweetness and tenderness gone from American life, the compassion and modesty and earnestness?"
Had Cuomo been elected in 1992 instead of Arkansas dirtbag Bill Clinton, he would've made an enormous difference on the spirit and future of the country, much as FDR and JFK did. He would've tried to take the post-Cold War U.S. in a very different direction, saving us from ClintonBush and Obama. (With a lot more of that to come, in whatever form.)
Of course they would have tried to Carter-ize him, or worse. (Look what they did to someone as harmless as Bill Clinton.) But I think Cuomo would have beaten them, perhaps becoming as big as Lincoln. I remember very clearly where I was when he announced his decision not to run in '92. I was stunned and heartbroken. He was far ahead in every poll for the Democratic nomination and well ahead of incumbent President Bush in the head-to-heads. We still don't know what happened there, but let's assume the Clinton gangsters and those anti-Catholic Italian "family" rumors had something to do with it.
Mario Cuomo, 1932 - 2015, RIP.