Even with all its ongoing weaknesses, the American left wields more power today than it has in decades, sending democratic socialists and hard-line progressives to city councils, statehouses, and Congress with increasing regularity. Bernie Sanders, as chairman of the Senate’s budget committee, played an instrumental role in making Joe Biden’s stimulus bill a potential prelude to a historic expansion of the welfare state.

But Andrew Cuomo’s durability in New York — almost all the leading Democrats in the state have called for him to resign over sexual harassment allegations and for covering up nursing home deaths, but he’s refused to go — is evidence that in the seats of ultimate power across America, the Left is still shut out. Though members of Congress generally draw far more media attention and can accrue massive, million-plus social media followings, it’s the governors setting the policy agenda for much of the nation.

The Left needs to start dreaming of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes and Jamaal Bowmans in governors’ mansions, lording over legislatures and doing the work to make their own states hubs of ambitious leftist policies. Governors control tens of billions of dollars; a different governor in New York could have enacted a single-payer health care plan for the state by now. Leftists in power can grow the influence of unions, pursue innovative public transportation projects, erect far more permanently and deeply affordable housing, and tax the rich aggressively to pay for it.