I was on the elliptical at the gym yesterday, flipping through cable news. It was all Cuomo, Cuomo, Cuomo. Even on the networks that once treated the New York governor as if he tinkled perfume.

One after another, New York politicians called for Cuomo’s head and predicted that he’d be gone soon. A month at most.

“There is no way Andrew Cuomo survives this,” one declared. “Every Democrat in the country has called on him to resign.”

Hah, I thought. Does Ralph Northam ring a bell?

National Democrats demanded his head, too, back in February 2018 after the country learned that Northam had pranced around in blackface and/or Klan robes and found it so cute he put it in his medical school yearbook.

Anyone else remember Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine,  Doug Wilder, Terry McAuliffe, Elaine Luria, Al Sharpton and scores of other Dems indignantly demanding that Northam resign? 

"We now know what Ralph Northam did when he thought no one was watching. The person in that photo can’t be trusted to lead. Governor Northam must resign immediately," said Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Northam was so badly damaged, the yearbook photos so stunningly racist, that almost no one predicted that he’d still be calling the Governor’s Mansion home three years later.

He survived, of course, because top Virginia Democrats in the line of succession began to fall. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax was accused of sexual assault and rape by two credible women. Then Attorney General Mark Herring admitted that he, too, had dabbled in blackface.

Next up? Republican leader of the House of Delegates Kirk Cox.

Ooops.

And just like that all the moral outrage evaporated. The indignant Democrats from coast to coast became the silent Democrats.

They knew it was more important to cling to power than to principle.

With that lesson in the rearview, Virginians watching the scandal in Albany are skeptical.

Maybe Andrew Cuomo will be impeached and removed from office. Maybe he’ll give up and resign.

But I wouldn’t bet on it. 

Ralph Northam wrote the playbook on clinging to power in the midst of a scandal. Question is, did Andrew Cuomo read it?

Pass the popcorn.