Turns out New York’s “Accidental Governor” is no more capable of understanding the responsibilities that come with the job than his predecessor. But while Eliot Spitzer’s fatal flaw is hubris mixed with a wee bit of sex addiction is seems, David Paterson’s problem is simply ineptitude.

Paterson and his supporters have been making the claim for months now that he has been unfairly targeted by the media, and certainly the ugly coupling of sloppy bloggers and immoral tabloids produced a pathetically irresponsible miasma of “a rumor from a single unconfirmed unreliable source” “reporting”. But as it turns out, there was even more fire than smoke.

That the sitting Governor would call the victim of an alleged assault by one of his closest aides (his people say she called him but DP declined to make that case on the radio this morning) after she had been pursuing legal redress is unfathomable to those of us who haven’t been CEOs. It’s just strange how power seems to erase a person’s (presumably) natural ability to use his brain. It’s not like he was turning up aces before this happened. You’d think with all of his troubles he might have thought picking up the phone and calling this woman was maybe not the best idea. Or not.

Paterson was never suited to be the boss. To his credit he said all the right things about the state budget and the economy and did his best to shame the hucksters in the Legislature to take the crisis seriously. But they never took him seriously and for good reason. What happens behind the scenes in politics is way more important than what goes on in public and everyone in Albany knew Paterson was the captain of a rudderless ship.

Let’s be fair: “Steamroller Spitzer” didn’t do any better with the Legislature either but there was no question he, and everyone else, at least knew what he wanted to do. Paterson has shown no such inclination.

The political establishment has been waiting for him to declare he wasn’t running for (re)election and Democrats have been fretting about his unwillingness to take a fall for the sake of the party. Seems like that’s all about to take care of itself.

And so now it’s in the hands of Andrew Cuomo. Haven’t we seen this movie before? Cuomo — the guy who wants to be Governor so bad we can taste it — was given the opportunity to screw Spitzer with Troopergate (Spitzer ended up screwing himself instead…well someone ended up screwing Spitzer but she’s not important right now) and now Cuomo has the power to finish off Paterson. There’s definitely something Shakespearean going on around here.

Back up to this past winter when Paterson’s amateur-hour handling of his pick to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate left just about everyone slack-jawed. He managed to piss of anyone connected to the Kennedys (not an insignificant body of people especially in the Democratic Party) by publicly dissing and embarrassing Caroline Kennedy before doing precisely what the White House didn’t want him to do — pluck newly-reelected Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand from her very Republican district thereby allowing the GOP to score a quick victory just months after Obama’s sweeping win. Fortunately for Dems the GOP in New York is even more dysfunctional than they are and managed to lose what should have been a sure win.

That gave New Yorkers a taste of the Governor’s incompetence. He then inexplicably fed that perception over the next couple of months by failing to exert any leadership over the Legislature as it’s members descended into chaos. Ever since Paterson’s poll numbers have been in the dumps and we’ve talked a lot about it here, here, and here. In fact all along we’ve said despite his disasterous ratings — even among African-Americans — Paterson was probably safe from a primary challenge unless a major African-American politician broke from supporting him.

Enter Barack Obama.

But why? Why would Obama care enough at this stage to get involved in New York’s local politics? He’s not from here. He doesn’t need help from a New York Governor. The election isn’t until 2010 when Congresssional elections will surely dominate the political storyline. So why?

Enter Chuck Schumer.

Several people close to Paterson and Schumer say this has Chuck’s fingerprints all over it. Schumer was the one who first mentioned Gillibrand and eventually got his way. Chuck is the one who in two terms heading the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee brought his party first into the majority and then made it filibuster-proof. Chuck is the (not so) hidden power center in the Senate. And Chuck doesn’t want to deal with a Governor heading the ticket in 2010 that could bring it all crashing down.

You see Senator Gillibrand is up for election in 2010 too and her poll numbers are only so-so despite her spreading a heavy dose of Chuck’s media magic across the Empire State. If Paterson is in trouble on top — especially if Rudy Giuliani were to run as he has been threatening — Gillibrand could be collateral damage. Meaning Chuck’s choice — Chuck’s bluest of blue states — could be the one that yields the filibuster-proof majority.

And so he called in the big gun to try and ease Paterson out. Unfortunately the Governor has other ideas and our sources say he is the one who leaked the story creating blowback on Obama and Schumer (neither of whom he is all that fond of anyway). So now Paterson can say he’s running and he’s standing up to pressure from his own party because he puts the people of New York first. Blah blah blah.

Michael Steele’s unchecked inanity aside (the Times lets the RNC Chairman get away with this: “I think Governor Paterson’s numbers are about the same as Governor Corzine’s numbers, and yet the president was with Governor Corzine and I don’t know whether there’s been a request for Governor Corzine to step down in New Jersey….” Corzine is down by 8, Paterson is down by 20), Obama should not have let himself be drawn into this mess this early. Worse, he got smacked by the woefully undertalented Paterson.

Nonetheless Paterson and the Democrats have real problems. Watch Charlie Rangel. If he starts spending private time with Paterson the feckless Governor may yet find himself with an ambassadorship to Fiji.

New York State Capitol

So the Albany soap opera has come to a close. Crystal and Alexis will live to catfight another day. Serena and Blair will return in the fall. And Malcolm and Pedro will assuredly be ready for more battles next session. In the meantime let’s figure out the winners and losers from the month of madness.

Losers

We’ll start with the losers because it’s easier.

Republicans

Already in a deep state of disarray and on the wrong end of the demographic pendulum, New York Republicans came thisclose to pulling off a miracle. The problem is they had to consort with a criminal (OK not a convicted criminal but still) to get there and surprise surprise he stabbed them in the back. The GOP gets no credit for trying to fix Albany and ends up with no more power than when this all started. Ouch.

Senate Democrats

It was clear when they won control last November that these guys (and gals) were waaaay out of their league. Having spent their entire careers in the minority where they had been paid to do virtually nothing (since they had no power and no real function), they ascended to the leadership without any idea how to run the place. Nothing that has happened in the last 30 days will convince anyone otherwise. Indeed now everyone knows what reporters and Albany insiders knew nine months ago.

Mike Bloomberg

This may not seem so obvious because Bloomberg kvetched about the problem plenty, echoing the sentiments of most New Yorkers. Nonetheless in having to fight for school control and the ability to raise taxes, Bloomberg was forced to draw attention to two things that may not help him much in his reelection effort. Then again he’s gonna spend $100 million bucks against a guy no one knows is even running.

Tom Golisano

Having first helped produce the Democratic win in November and then having prodded the deserting Dems into action, billionaire Floridian (nee Rochesterite) Tom Golisano has proven he can play the puppetmaster — he’s just not very good at it. Golisano wants reform but nothing he has precipitated is likely to produce lasting change. I would LOVE to stand corrected on this one.

New Yorkers

We made California look good. New Yorkers got the government they deserve. By reelecting their State Senators and Assembly members year after year New Yorkers have, like many Americans, cast aside their responsibility to elect officials who will work in the best interest of his or her constituents. Now no one can argue they don’t know what the result of this has been. New Yorkers got screwed to be sure, but honestly, don’t we deserve it?

Winners

David Paterson

The only winner here is, oddly, Governor David Paterson. Sure there will be arguments that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will benefit in his quiet attempt to be the right Democrat for Governor in 2010 but where’s the evidence? His limited contribution was to declare that Paterson couldn’t appoint a Lieutenant Governor. Most New Yorkers will think that makes Cuomo part of the problem.

Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver might also be deemed a winner but he was already the most powerful guy in Albany before the chaos and he remains so today. And don’t talk to us about Pedro Espada. Yes he is now Majority Leader. No, it won’t keep him from being indicted.

The only person who gets any bump out of this is Paterson who made the right noises and, with his Lt. Governor move, will be perceived by the public to have created the spark that made this problem go away. That being said, winning in this case is a relative thing. Paterson had no where to go but up.

Circus Promoter Tom Golisano

There’s big news about Tom Golisano.

The formerly upstate billionaire (he’s still got the money but he moved to Florida) is dating former tennis star Monica Seles. So reports Page Six. Oh, and the three-time candidate for New York Governor  just loves the circus. How else to explain his recent quarterbacking of the quasi-Republican coup in Albany?

Golisano has always been an odd bird in New York politics. In his three runs for Governor as an independent (94, 98, 02) he always seemed to have it out for Republican George Pataki (who won each time) even though they, at times, seemed to disagree about very little. Golisano’s reform mantle has really been a cover for lowering taxes in the state in which he built his successful payroll company. Nothing wrong with that.

So last fall Golisano put some of his money into Democratic State Senate candidates hoping to hitch a ride on the demographic train that spelled the inevitable end of decades-long Republican rule in Albany’s upper chamber, if not in 2008 than certainly in 2010. When the Dems did in fact win control of the Senate Golisano expected a hearing. Or at least a little courtesy.

Instead we’ve learned he got a fairly rude brush off from the newly-ensconced Majority Leader Malcolm Smith. Golisano says he was pissed after Smith spent an entire meeting with the billionaire fooling around with his Blackberry. Quel suprise!

Smith was incompetent on day one and, as numerous others have written in the last few days, he horribly misunderstood how to govern with a one-seat majority. So Golisano helped convince two Democratic Senators to back Republican Dean Skelos as the new Majority Leader and the coup was on. But if the G man seriously believes this will change anything he is more deluded than his mentor, Ross Perot.

First, the two Dems he lured to the team are both in serious legal trouble and may both end up sent packing before their terms end. Both Pedro Espada (under investigation by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for using state funds for himself — a charge he went to trial on a few years back and won) and Hiram Monserrate (soon to go on trial for felony assault of his girlfriend) are hardly posterboys for reform. Indeed Espada has shown he will do almost anything to save his political skin. That’s what makes this next part pretty scary: As part of this deal, Espada becomes President Pro Tem of the Senate, meaning he will become Acting Governor the second David Paterson becomes incapacitated or even leaves the state. So now Paterson is a prisoner of New York. Could be worse. Let’s hope he doesn’t get an appendicitis though.

Of course everything is still in flux and it’s Albany so the only thing worth predicting is that this will all end in an unpredictable and highly entertaining way if you’re into dysfunction. And that’s what Golisano has bought for himself and the state he no longer calls home: Even more political dysfunction.

Smith was no leader but he was the Leader of the Senate and with only about a week left for the Senate, Assembly, and Governor to get a whole mess of really important stuff done, this chaos certainly does not serve the people of the Great State of New York. The Republicans agreed to Golisano’s demands for substantial reform in the way the Senate works which, if Skelos and Company really meant it, might actually be worth the turmoil. But Skelos? C’mon Tommy, don’t you listen to The Who? Try track the last track on Who’s Next. You might learn something.

The Senate Republicans proved over their 66 years of (almost) uninterrupted power (Dems were in “control” for nine months in 1965 due to redistricting-mandated multiple elections) to be as venal and corrupt as their Democratic opponents. It’s not for nothing that their former long-time Majority Leader Joe Bruno has been charged with 8 Federal corruption counts.

Golisano is clearly a savvier negotiator in business than in politics since any idiot realizes Republicans would have promised anything to get back in power. Keeping those promises is another story. And Golisano’s reform bona fides have always been a little suspect.

Last fall he promised to take on his fellow billionaire politician Mike Bloomberg over the Mayor’s extension of term limits (allowing MB to run for a third term) but then punted, spending chump change for a tepid last-minute “effort” that failed.

This time around Golisano has done little more than bankroll a new show for the Albany Circus Maximus. I’m sure he’ll enjoy his ringside seats before jetting back to his waterfront abode in Naples, Florida. As for the rest of us? Let ‘em eat popcorn.

Gay Marriage in Springfield (Twentieth Century Fox)

It’s really hard to see the political logic in Governor David Paterson’s unveiling of a same-sex marriage bill for New York on Thursday. But maybe that’s the beauty of it. Honestly, Paterson has no where to go but up.

Paterson’s poll numbers are in the toilet. His handling of the Kennedy-Gillibrand-Clinton thing was a fiasco. He had his lunch handed to him on the budget. He can’t get a handful of gangster Senators from his own party to grow up and back a plan to rescue the MTA (and their own constituents). Oh, and now he thinks is the time for a gay marriage bill.

The barriers to New York legalizing same-sex marriage have been dropping for a couple of years. First Eliot Spitzer campaigned on passing a bill. Then Republicans in the Senate who had blocked any vote on a marriage bill passed in the Assembly lost control of the upper chamber. But a funny thing happened on the way to Democratic control of the levers of power in Albany: Ruben Diaz Sr.

Senator Diaz has had a suspiciously singular obsession with gays and gay marriage for much of his political career (which began in 2001 with his election to the New York City Council). Diaz was one of the “gang of four” who held up how the Senate would be led after November’s election in order to each obtain their own personal objectives. For Diaz that was a promise not to allow a vote on same-sex marriage.

Since Democrats have only the barest of majorities in the Senate (32-30) every vote they lose from one of their own has to be replaced with a Republican vote. So far four Democratic Senators have said they will vote ‘no’ on gay marriage. What are the odds of finding four Republican Senators to vote for gay marriage? That’s almost a rhetorical question.

It doesn’t help that the new Archbishop Timothy Dolan made opposition to gay marriage one of his signature issues when introduced to New York Catholics (and the rest of us) on Wednesday. That will make it even tougher for Catholic Senators.

Of course there’s a legitimate (and unanswered) question as to what religion should have to do with this. Same-sex marriage laws in Vermont, Iowa, Connecticut, and Massachusetts deal with civil marriages. None of those state’s laws require churches for perform same-sex marriages (nor could they according to that musty old document known as the US Constitution). Indeed the Paterson bill specifically notes churches do not have to perform same-sex marriages unless they choose to. Churches and pastors and archbishops act as though what they believe ought to be codified in civil law that applies to people of other faiths.

Isn’t that what we all think is wrong with the way the Taliban runs the areas it controls in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Last time we checked America was not a theocracy. For centuries some church people complained that marriage between two people of different races was “against God’s will” and until anti-miscegenation laws were ruled unconstitutional in 1967 a majority of states would not allow two people of different races to marry. The very next year in a national Gallup poll 72% of Americans said, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, they didn’t think two people of different races should be allowed to marry. When Gallup asked the same question in 2007 and one in seven Americans still say people of different races should not marry.

Paterson alluded to this history in his announcement and he did manage to bring together a pretty impressive bunch for his news conference including Mayor Bloomberg and a host of Federal and state electeds. The issue has also gained the support of both Senators Schumer and Gillibrand. (In fact Gillibrand, not to be outdone in the “fastest political rebranding on record” department issued this statement: “New York and the nation are ready to start a new chapter. The time has come for full marriage equality.  I commend the Governor for his leadership on this important issue. If Iowa can do it, so can we.”)

Privately many advocates in the same-sex marriage trenches are worried, however, that the momentum from their recent hard-won victories in Vermont and Iowa will be threatened if New York’s legislature fails to pass a marriage bill. They have been careful to pick their battles and were stung by their defeat in nominally gay-friendly California on the Proposition 8 battle in November. A loss in nominally-gay friendly New York would be an undeniable setback.

So what is Paterson thinking? Perhaps he really believes it can pass. Or perhaps he understands that by pushing this hot button issue to the top of the Albany agenda he can accomplish three things: Redirect the public’s attention to his leadership; Force opponents to say the ugly and stupid things they will inevitably say; and thereby get a Civil Unions bill passed instead of full gay marriage. The end game in that might be to hope that a court challenge similar to the one in New Jersey (the state’s court ruled civil unions weren’t enough) would eventually result in legal same-sex marriage in New York.

In the meantime, maybe fewer people will be talking about Andrew Cuomo….

NYS Comptroller Tom DiNapoli

Add State Comptroller to the very very long list of people who think the budget agreed to by Albany’s “3 men in a room” sucks. In fact, other than the three men in the room (Governor David Paterson, Senate Majority ‘Leader’ Malcolm Smith, and Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver) and their respective lackeys, the list includes pretty much everybody.

Here’s what Comptroller DiNapoli — himself a former Assembly member who then-Governor Spitzer feared would go too easy on the Albany power trio — has to say:

New York faced an extraordinary challenge to adopt a 2009-10 State Budget in the context of a daunting recession. My preliminary review of the budget indicates it does not adequately respond to today’s economic realities.

The budget is not a long-term solution to New York’s propensity to spend more than the state can afford. While the budget proposes to close an unprecedented gap, it does so by an over reliance on non-recurring federal stimulus funds and new tax revenues projected to materialize at a time of declining tax receipts.

This is essentially a buy-time budget, based on a hope that the economy recovers quickly. It’s a very fragile basket to place all the taxpayers’ eggs in. Instead of using the Federal stimulus to restructure the financial plan and match projected revenues to long term growth in spending, the budget uses stimulus funds as a short-term fix.

The danger is that New York could end up right back where we started, with huge budget gaps and an unsustainable level of spending. I will provide a more detailed review of the enacted budget shortly.

But of course all that matters to the statehouse wrecking crew is, whom if anyone will voters take their anger out on? Since voters almost universally reelect their local legislators who then pick the Senate Leader and the Speaker, Governor Paterson ought to be very worried. He’s the only guy voters can take it out on directly.

Sen. Majority Leader Malcom Smith

For what it’s worth here are a few of my random thoughts and favorite stories on this chilly Monday:

It’s almost doomsday! With the MTA being forced to vote on it’s doomsday budget loaded with big fare hikes and bigger service cuts the responsibility for this rests squarely on the shoulders of Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith who has perfected the art (long-practiced in Albany) of fiddling while Rome burns. He has had an astonishingly inept three months leading the Senate.

While Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Governor David Paterson long ago agreed to sign off on some bridge tolls and tax hikes to rescue the transit system, Smith and his fellow Senate Democrats dickered and (internally) bickered. The result? A completely farcical “plan” to save the MTA with modest tax and fare hikes — a plan that was mathematically flawed — a plan that would not work.

To his credit Paterson rejected it almost immediately. And Smith? There has been no real response. There’s some leadership.

So here’s my question: Which newspaper editorial page will be the first to call for Smith to resign? Maybe the first will wait until after the budget is finished. But sooner or later it will come….

——–

Gov. David Paterson

Which brings us to Governor Paterson and his woes. A new poll shows his approval rating continues to decline and now resides in the sub-30 range. Ouch. A new report dug up by Liz Benjamin over at the Daily News shows that when he was Senate Minority Leader his leadership was essentially nonexistent. Finally it appears that Paterson has signed off on a Silver-Smith (there are opportunities here for wordsmiths more clever than I) budget plan to spend every dime of the Federal stimulus money on keeping state spending high while also raising $8 billion in taxes over the next two years.

So here’s another question: Which newspaper ed board will be the first to call on Paterson to declare he will NOT seek reelection thereby freeing him to act in the best interest of the state — not his political rehabilitation?

——–

President Obama’s toxic asset plan has gotten some terrible reviews from some of his biggest fans but Wall Street seems to love it. Of course remember that lots of conservative critics have been quick to point out that the market has dipped a lot since Obama took office and dipped precipitously on certain days when Obama announced certain proposals or Congress passed certain bills (see: Stimulus, for one).

So will the frothers at Fox give Obama credit for coming up with a “good” plan, at least according to the market? I’m going with…”Yeah, right!”

——–

Speaking of Obama, Nate Silver over at 538 has a great re-analysis of the election results from last fall. Remember that shortly after the election one of the principle bits of analysis was how Obama did better than the previous Democratic nominee John Kerry everywhere except Appalachia. That led to a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle talk about how racist all those poor white folks (rednecks) were.

But Silver went back and looked at how Obama did only among non-black voters figuring that the previous analysis was skewed by the large and almost totally one-sided nature of the vote among African-Americans. What he discovered is that whites in the Deep South were much redder than their Appalachian cousins.

In retrospect that probably shouldn’t surprise anyone considering our history. Still it’s important to set the record straight. Kudos Nate!

Percentage of White Vote (Red=McCain, Blue=Obama)

New York Gov. William Sulzer in 1913

The latest Get Real video is a history lesson that Albany’s Democrats seem never to have learned. Turns out their self-destructive behavior now is eerily similar to what happened in 1913 — the last year (other than one year during the Depression) that the party controlled all three levers of power in state government. Could they be sowing the seeds of their own destruction again?

Get Real: Dem History Forgotten from Jay DeDapper on Vimeo.

Gov. David Paterson

And you thought the stock market was having a rough year…. This morning’s Marist Poll piles on to the downward trend Governor Paterson has seen in two recent surveys from other polling organizations and shows his position to be getting worse by the week. Here’s the most damning line from the folks up in Poughkeepsie:

Governor Paterson’s approval rating is the lowest approval rating a New York State governor has received in the Marist Poll’s nearly thirty year history of statewide surveys.

Ouch. Paterson’s approval rating is down to 26% — five weeks ago Marist showed it at 46%. By way of c0mparison Spitzer’s and Pataki’s low-water marks were both 30%.

The problems for Paterson are total: Democrats give him only a 30% approval and would much prefer Andrew Cuomo to run for Governor in 2010 (62%-26%). Independents are even tougher on him than Republicans — just 20% of non-affiliated voters think Paterson’s doing a good job versus 26% of Republicans who think he is.

Dig in a little deeper and you find voters basically like David Paterson the man (77% say he’s working hard, 50% says he cares about people) but don’t much care for David Paterson the Governor (53% don’t think he’s a very good leader, 59% think he’s not doing a good job on the budget).

The election is still a long way off and the economy will clearly dictate much of what voters are feeling by then but as Get Real has pointed out over the last two months, Paterson’s only hope is that prominent African-American politicians stick with him, thereby making a Cuomo run difficult (here’s a previous post about that).

If Paterson’s polling problems don’t begin to go away, it’s going to be very hard for the Rangels and Sharptons of the world to stand by and NOT make a move.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch

As much as we love to reward those who own up to their mistakes it’s a little hard to take Rupert Murdoch’s mea culpa over the NY Post Chimp-Obama cartoon at face value. Here’s what he wrote in an item place in a small box at the bottom of Page 2 in Tuesday’s Post.

“As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me. Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted. Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you – without a doubt – that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such. We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.”

Why it took six days for someone in charge at the Post to apologize is a valid question and one the paper’s PR folks have not answered for Get Real yet. But it’s probably a fairly simple case of following the money.

Al Sharpton is meeting with the FCC in Washington tomorrow to discuss the waiver the agency granted Murdoch that allows him to own two TV stations (Channels 5 and 9) and a newspaper (Post) in a single market in violation of Federal law. In the wake of the cartoon Sharpton said he wanted to go not after the newspaper but after the corporate parent and the license waiver was a major benefit to News Corp.

So Rupe’s mea culpa is likely tinged with more than a bit of practicality. Still, at least he said it.

The other mea culpa comes from me. Back at the end of January on the heals of several polls testing what New Yorkers thought of Governor Paterson I wrote: “Pundits be damned, the public is NOT blaming Paterson for the Caroline Kennedy fiasco (and) Paterson is still widely popular, and all things being equal, he is not in a particularly tough position for a campaign that will begin a year from now.”

I continued after noting that one poll showed Paterson to be essentially tied with Andrew Cuomo in a hypothetical primary: “Oooo delicious, right? Not so fast. Andrew Cuomo has clawed his way back to respectability after primarying Carl McCall in 2002 thus earning what looked to be the everlasting enmity of African-American (and plenty of other) Dems who thought it mighty uncool for the brash young scion to try and keep New York from possibly electing it’s first black Governor. So what’s he gonna do now that he’s in (almost) everyone’s good graces? Take on New York’s actual first black Governor? Not on your life unless top African American politicos like Rangel, Sharpton, and some guy named Obama throw Dave over the transom. If that happens there won’t be a primary because Paterson will resign or find himself Ambassador of [insert obscure country here].”

Well, fast-forward one month and Jay doesn’t look so smart any more. A new Siena Poll shows just how badly things have gone from not-so-bad to meltdown. In this survey Paterson’s favorables are now down to 40% with his unfavorables at 47%. The damage is in the suburbs (34%-55%), among women (35%-48%), and worst for him, among Democrats (44%-41%).

Put another way only one quarter of registered Democrats say they would vote for him in 2010 and in that hypothetical primary Cuomo now would beat Paterson 53% – 27%. When Siena then ran hypothetical general election matchups with Rudy Giuliani as the Republican candidate (which some very smart observers believe is a very unlikely prospect for the now wealthy jet-setting former Mayor and failed Presidential candidate) against Paterson or Cuomo, Giuliani handily beats Paterson but Cuomo handily beats Rudy.

So…I was wrong, or at least premature in January to say Paterson was not in a tough position for 2010. He has spent the last month mired in ineffectiveness making his Caroline-Gillibrand kerfuffle look like a stroke of managerial genius. As I noted in January Democrats — especially prominent African American Democrats — will need to make the first move but if Paterson’s performance in the polls is not better by the fall watch the Rangels and Sharptons of this world very closely.

If they move an “irresistible” offer of an ambassadorship to East Wintogia won’t be far behind.