By Ron Widelec, Mar 22, 2019

For years, Democrats in Albany were able to blame their failures on the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), a group of renegade Democrats that caucused with Republicans and prevented progressive legislation from coming up for a vote. It was widely speculated Governor Andrew Cuomo was complicit in the creation of the IDC as a way of blocking progressive legislation that he did not support but did not want to have to veto, which would have caused backlash among the grassroots. In the wake of Trump’s election, there was a huge grassroots effort to defeat the IDC and the Democratic Party power brokers finally joined that effort to appease the grassroots. In the 2018 campaigns that followed, the new wave of Democrats promised a new style of doing business, in which a IDC-less Albany would usher in a new era of progressive policies. Many New York Senate candidates ran for office pledging to support transformative policies. A sweeping blue wave carried them to victory, giving the Democrats control of both houses of the New York legislature and the Governorship….

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