We’re telling ourselves it doesn’t matter who’s in charge of the largest city in the country. This is, in some sense, borne by history. Every mayor going back forty years was a hardline reactionary or a bumbling pushover, a nominal liberal promoted from some obscure planning committee, clinging to power for reasons he couldn’t articulate. One man does not undermine a people, a culture, an economy. The city groans on, but eventually it becomes too expensive, like it already is for most people. A coronavirus touches down at JFK, they feign concern for a few months, your kids are stuffed back into charter schools called like, Success First Academies, something about vouchers. The rivers swell, the garbage piles up, the cops play Tetris and wave guns in your face.Can Andrew Cuomo be worse than Eric Adams? Cuomo is not, himself, a cop. His plan, insofar as there is one, is for rent to get higher, for transit to get slower, to flood the subway with NYPD officers. He’s running a listless tough-on-crime campaign, crowing about increasing violence (false), Curtis Sliwa Lite, Eric Adams But This Time It’s A Handsy White Guy. He’s doing this because he’s lazy, and because he has nothing else. He’s uninterested in the job and has not resided in New York City for thirty years.He panders to landlords, developers, car owners — a whiny, election-carrying minority. He will fight congestion pricing, although he supported it as governor, just like he vetoed hundreds of bills passed by the state legislature’s Democratic supermajority. Like Joe Biden in 2020, there’s no case to be made for his campaign, his qualifications, or his character — yet we are told the rank-and-file loves him, he is a mystical Black Vote Whisperer, racking up labor endorsements. Who are we, the left, the laptop class, to question the wisdom of Mount Neboh Baptist Church and the New York Iron Workers? This is cynicism at its purest; all you’re saying is Cuomo has name recognition and people are stupid.In an effo