Vote Row E. Vote Working Families Party.”

That’s the mantra New York City’s progressives have long chanted on their way to the polls. It’s an ingenious solution for the conflicted partisan, someone who is pragmatic but can’t stomach backing the Democratic Party. You can vote for a Democratic candidate on the union-backed Working Families line. You can have your vote matter and support a third party, who may not run its own candidates, but manages to pull mainstream Democrats leftward anyway.

On its website, the organization calls itself “a third party with a twist.”  This might seem an impossible contradiction. And recent events are starting to prove that true.