[truthout.org]

"If a Budding Socialist Movement Can Defeat Amazon, Imagine What Else It Can Do.

For socialists, New York has been the site of the most important electoral campaign win yet: Ocasio-Cortez’s insurgent run for the House in 2018. Her victory led to an explosion of membership in DSA nationally ... Less examined, however, is how Ocasio-Cortez’s win was part of a massive shift in the politics of New York City and New York State.

Her victory, along with Julia Salazar’s in the New York State Senate, were, in the grand scheme of their respective legislative bodies, small ... Yet Ocasio-Cortez’s and Salazar’s victories, combined with the continued organizing efforts and electoral victories of the socialist and broader working-class movement that put them in office, quickly effected a massive shift in New York politics that produced huge victories against two of the most powerful capitalists in the world today: real estate developers and Amazon."

New York now had only two socialists in elected office: one in the House of Representatives, one in the state senate. But the presence of two of them, as part of a broader progressive upsurge in the state, would soon have massive consequences. Salazar’s election was part of a wave of state senate primary races that unseated the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), a group of six state senators who were Democrats but voted with the Republican Party, often denying the Democrats in the state legislature a majority."