I really like Nate Silver’s post from Monday about comparing Cuomo and Obama. He focuses on imagining the possible:
The point is that it isn’t always such a simple matter to know exactly what is possible and what isn’t. Passing a same-sex marriage through the New York Senate might have seemed impossible this year — until Mr. Cuomo actually did it.
…
there are a lot of fights that Mr. Obama has avoided. At least insofar as is evident from his public statements, he didn’t make a major push for climate change legislation, or for an immigration bill like the DREAM Act, or for a second stimulus. He hasn’t taken as confrontational a posture as he might have with Republicans on the debt ceiling.
The point is not that this is the right strategy or the wrong strategy. It might well have been the right strategy — I don’t come to a conclusion about that. But I do think it’s fair to characterize it as a risk-averse strategy. And that, at the core, is what bothers some liberals about Mr. Obama’s approach to the presidency. Fairly or not, they want him to push the envelope more than he has and to take a few more chances — to expand the realm of the possible, as Mr. Cuomo seems to have done in New York.
That last point: spot on, I think.
