Yesterday, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo (D) passed away at age 82. The speech mentioned as his most important was his short speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1984 where he described Reagan’s “Shining City on a Hill” as actually a tale of two cities: one for the rich and one for the rest of America. It is a theme revisited many times over the years because, really, Republicans simply will not give up on their ideal America – where the wealthy and connected have the power and the have-nots fight among themselves for the scraps left over.
Gov. Mario Cuomo:
President Reagan told us from the very beginning that he believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. “Government can’t do everything,” we were told, so it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest. Make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class.
You know, the Republicans called it “trickle-down” when Hoover tried it. Now they call it “supply side.” But it’s the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough to live in its good neighborhoods. But for the people who are excluded, for the people who are locked out, all they can do is stare from a distance at that city’s glimmering towers. […]
The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. “The strong” — “The strong,” they tell us, “will inherit the land.”
We Democrats believe in something else. We democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once. […]
Their policies divide the nation into the lucky and the left-out, into the royalty and the rabble.
Transcript below the fold …