Kennedy was wrong historically, failing to anticipate the magnitude of the issues that would arise with the civil-rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the social movements of the coming decades. What’s worse, however, was that he was also wrong politically. In proclaiming the dawning of an era of technocrats, the era of competence and the search for the right solution, Kennedy was, in effect, declaring the end of politics.
.. As for Cuomo, he continuously invoked Trump: the question, he made clear, is who can best wage battle against the President, who, as Cuomo said, “is the main risk to New York; he is trying to change the rights and values of New Yorkers.” It’s a fair assessment of the situation, and a fair question. But taking on Trump is not a matter of having the best accountants and firefighters, or the best-articulated policy proposals: it is a matter of putting forward a vision that offers the opposite of the Trumpian pull of the imaginary past. That vision—the promise of something yet unknown—is, in fact, the stuff of politics.