Portside

Cynthia Nixon did not defeat Andrew Cuomo. But her policy director argues in an interview that her campaign opened up new spaces for progressives and the Left in New York politics.

The latest win for the insurgent progressive movement within the Democratic Party is in a New York State Senate district. Julia Salazar is headed to the State Senate after toppling a long-serving incumbent in her Brooklyn district.

Mainstream outlets can’t stop writing about how the DSA’s endorsement of Cynthia Nixon was a model of democracy in action, unlike the Democratic Party.

It’s a once-in-a-blue-moon event for the Working Families Party to tell voters to stay away from our ballot line. But when Joe Lieberman is making an argument for voting on the WFP line, something is very fishy. So how’d we end up here?

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New York’s sort-of-third party has won some big victories in the past two decades but its future is uncertain after defying Andrew Cuomo and his labor allies to endorse Cynthia Nixon. This Saturday - May 19 - the Working Families State Convention is in Harlem.

Only by understanding how Trump fits within our recent history will the left be able to figure out where we go from here. We are once again at a moment of consequential political realignment. Both major parties are deeply divided. We need to engage in shaping the newly emerging parties. The Democrats may or may not move left; they, like the Republicans, may split.

How we vote on November 8 will be the first step in a long process of building a new economic and political order in New York State and in the United States. It is an opportunity to push the nation - and Dems - forward. It is important to vote the Working Families Party (WFP) line for several reasons. The WFP is an independent progressive political party that in New York State can run progressive candidates who are endorsed by both the WFP and the Democratic Party.

We simply can't afford to throw away the energy, the idealism, the thirst for justice that the Sanders campaign has revealed and revived. In the long run, that probably matters even more than who sits in the Oval Office. For the Democrats, the road to reconciliation is not obscure. Sanders is right to rail at our rigged system - but if the Democrats win in November thanks in part to his ideas and his voters, he'll be positioned to do something about it.

The biggest question for Bernie Sanders and his supporters is whether they'll transform his presidential campaign into a permanent organization that can carry his political revolution forward in the long-term; or whether, like Occupy Wall Street, it will quickly disappear.