The Cuomo Conundrum | The Nation   The Cuomo Conundrum    •
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instance, Mario Cuomo. It was the elder Cuomo, after all, who
played the key role in rejuvenating the language and the
politics of New Deal liberalism in the Reagan era. His words
still managed to revive the progressive vision languishing at
the time, beneath Reagan’s two landslide electoral victories and
endless episodes of intra-liberal bloodletting. Cuomo’s
simultaneously erudite and eloquent orations succeeded in
honoring (New Left) cultural difference as they embraced the
(old left) ethic of team work and economic opportunity for all:
a “patch-quilt” nation working together, rather than the
“melting pot” of old. Most moving, politically and emotionally,
was his 1984 Democratic National Convention keynote address,
still engraved in the memory of millions who watched it on TV or
heard it on the radio. In that speech, as in many others, Cuomo
argued for a liberal philosophy built on a found