During the Bush I era, the Democrats (for some incomprehensible reason) thought that their best bet for the White House was to run Mario Cuomo, the current granny-killer’s dad, and a confused and cranky politician in his own right, whom no one outside New York especially liked.

That meant Bill Clinton’s path to the White House was being blocked by Mario Cuomo, who unfortunately did not decide to run. Had he run, polls showed him easily winning the Democrat nomination (why, again, don’t ask me), and he would have likely lost even to a candidate as unpopular and unlikable as Bush I.

Cuomo didn’t decide to run, but there was plenty of friction over it behind the scenes.

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton apologized to New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo on Tuesday for private remarks he made implying that Cuomo acts like a Mafioso.

The remarks became public Monday when Gennifer Flowers, who claims to have had a 12-year affair with Clinton, held a news conference and played tapes that she says were of phone conversations between her and Clinton. 

Flowers says she doesn’t care for Cuomo’s “demeanor.”

Clinton responds: “Boy, he is so aggressive.”

Flowers says she wouldn’t be surprised if Cuomo “didn’t have some Mafioso major connections.”

“Well, he acts like one,” Clinton says.

Mario was not happy.

As his host started to turn to the State of the Union, Cuomo said “if you insist on staying with this subject’ and talked of the American cultural mosaic, concluding “When you deal with that diversity perversely, when you undermine it, when you make it a cause of disruption, you’re getting at the very fabric of the democracy. You’re really attacking the democracy in a fundamental way when you say ‘nigger, kike, Mafioso.”

…

The governor, cutting in, turning the Clinton apology against him: “Before he ever even admitted that it was his voice on the tapes, he apologized; thereby admitting. So if somebody made a mistake here and incriminated Bill Clinton, it was Bill Clinton, not Mario Cuomo.’

Mario Cuomo didn’t end up running. Which was unfortunate as he would have likely spared America the Clinton years and the Hillary Clinton sequel. Nor did the Supreme Court thing happen, once Clinton came into office, which would have offered opportunities for another Obama Supreme Court appointment.

And if you want proof that the media’s reality distortion field around Andrew Cuomo was inherited from his father, here’s a fantasy from the New Yorker…

Think of how Cuomo would have dominated the Court with the force of his personality, his charm, his humor, and his extraordinary energy and capacity for work…  Think above all of his mesmerizing command of language—in conversation, in debate, and on the page. (Antonin Scalia, Cuomo’s fellow Italian-American Catholic, has a reputation as the Court’s foremost intellectual. Justice Cuomo would have made short work of him.)

Talk about a cult of personality without a personality. 

Anyway, the incredibly mesmerizing intellectual couldn’t decide on whether he wanted a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court or as Governor of New York.

And he ended up with neither one.

Eventually he decided on Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But, before he could offer her the post, Andrew Cuomo called Stephanopoulos. Was it still unfilled? If it was, Andrew said, and if the President offered it, this time the governor would accept. “Mario will do it because the President wants him to,” Andrew said. “But the President really has to put it to him. Unless he puts it to him, he won’t do it. He needs to use strong language, has to tell Mario that he has to do it.”

While Mario never ended up on the court (had he been appointed, his death might have potentially allowed Obama to fill his seat), Andy did get a consolation prize.

A front-row seat to the wrecking of the American economy.

Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country’s current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded “kickbacks” to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why.

That’s right, one of the greatest mass murderers in American history is also the Father of the Subprime Crisis. How much harm can one man do?

As you might gather, the Clintons and Cuomos had their issues. Those issues were largely buried, but Hillary Clinton never forgets a thing. And her list of enemies is legendary.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Monday backed an investigation into allegations New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women.

“These stories are difficult to read, and the allegations brought forth raise serious questions that the women who have come forward and all New Yorkers deserve answers to,” she said in a statement.

Unlike her husband’s accusers.

But Andy should have remembered that Hillary never forgets. Inside that bubbling stew of rage, chardonnay, and payoffs is a list with Cuomo’s name on it. Of course, the Cuomo family never forgets either. 

So the Cuomo-Clinton war can begin again.