Jonathan Alter: “Even then, most of us doubted he would show up and actually sign the papers allowing him to enter the 1992 New Hampshire primary. The New York Times had reported earlier that fall that Governor Mario Cuomo had spent only 36 nights out of more than 1,300 as governor in a bed other than his own at the Executive Mansion in Albany. The man just didn’t get out enough to be president.”

“But for liberal Democrats, the questions remain: Would he have won the presidency in 1992, and if he had, would the country have experienced a restoration of the New Deal and the Great Society and the liberal governing values he articulated so well?”

“Mario M. Cuomo, the three-term governor of New York who commanded the attention of the country with a compelling public presence, a forceful defense of liberalism and his exhaustive ruminations about whether to run for president, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 82,” the New York Times reports.

“His family confirmed the death, which occurred only hours after Mr. Cuomo’s son Andrew M. Cuomo was inaugurated in Manhattan for a second term as governor.”

Cuomo’s speech at the 1984 Democratic convention is one of the best ever.