Dean's New York Descendents Try to Make a Blue State Bluer

There’s no shortage of liberal candidates, but who do they oppose?

What to do if you’re running a group devoted to promoting progressive Democrat insurgents when most of the incumbents are progressive Democrats themselves?

That’s the dilemma faced for several years now by Democracy for New York City, the local affiliate of Democracy for America, a group that began as an offshoot of Howard Dean’s transformative 2004 presidential campaign.

“I sort of call it the establishment vs. the progressive conflict,” said Lewis Cohen, a former business reporter turned Wall Street investor who, in his spare time, acts as finance chair for the New York group. “It’s the progressive vs. establishment or institutional wing of the party, specifically on a local and state level. There’s no question about that.”

Democracy for America’s political director, Charles Chamberlain, explained it this way: “As an organization, one of the things that makes us different from the Democratic Party itself is that we can take positions in primaries, and do.”

As far as such ideas go, this may be, at least in theory, an ideal time to put it to the test in New York.

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