By the time I post this article, the election returns may have already been announced in New York state's Democratic gubernatorial primary. I state this up front to let readers know that I'm writing this before knowing how big a margin of victory the current governor, Andrew Cuomo, manages to gain over his Progressive challenger, Zephyr Teachout. Cuomo's victory is pretty much a foregone conclusion, but the size of his victory may be an important gauge of the growth of the Progressives, or what has previously been called "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." If Teachout does better than expected, it could have reverberations in the next few years, as the 2016 presidential contest gets underway.

For the past few years, Democrats have been pretty astoundingly united in Congress. After the passage of the Affordable Care Act and -- more importantly -- after the 2010 midterm "shellacking," Democrats have done a much better job of holding together and (mostly) singing from the same songbook than they have managed to do in quite some time. Partly, this was due to the defeat of a large portion of the "Blue Dog Democrats" in 2010, who had fractured the party during the entire Obamacare debate. The Blue Dogs were "centrist," which (in the Democratic Party) translates to "further right than the party as a whole." They were an outgrowth of two political tactics: Bill Clinton's "New Democrat" stance, and the "50-state strategy," which elected a lot of members of Congress with a "D" beside their name but with strong ties to Big Business and other non-traditional bedfellows for Democrats. The Blue Dogs, at their height, were a powerful faction within the party and they effectively killed any sort of public option (to say nothing of the single-payer option) in the Affordable Care Act. But now the Blue Dogs have been on the wane for years, and the faction that is getting a lot more attention in the Democratic Party is the Progressives. The "Overton window" within the party may be shifting from moving steadily rightwards to tacking back to the left, to put this another way.

The most-prominent example of this can also be found in New York, in the Big Apple itself. New York City has a new mayor, Bill de Blasio, who ran on an unashamedly Progressive platform. Now, one big-city mayor does not exactly a political wave make (as Yoda might put it), but the election did shake up Democrats to some extent, as de Blasio proved that Democrats can indeed be elected not just by giving lip service to grand (but nebulous) ideas like "fighting income disparity" but by championing actual Progressive policies to attack the division of wealth. Zephyr Teachout tried the same thing on a much bigger scale.

She is going to fail. That much appears certain. But Cuomo's reaction to her campaign was instructive, in a way. In some ways, he treated Teachout as a political gadfly not worthy of attention (he famously refuses to even speak her name, and refused to debate her, which is indeed what most strong candidates do with very minor challengers), but Cuomo also simultaneously played some political hardball against Teachout (filing a lawsuit in an effort to kick her off the primary ballot) which is not exactly normal when you are confident you're going to crush an opponent.

In all fairness, Cuomo isn't the worst Democrat out there when it comes to Progressive issues; although in some of these cases he's either been awfully reluctant to act or has only acted in response to Teachout's campaign. He was forced to tack left to pick up some key endorsements, which he likely wouldn't have bothered doing if Teachout didn't at least cause him some degree of electoral concern. Part of his problem was that Cuomo reportedly is obsessed with winning the vote in Western New York, which voted not only against him last time but also against his more-famous father as well. In a classic political triangulation move, he added Kathy Hochul to his ticket as the lieutenant governor candidate, because he thought her more centrist positions might provide him a landslide. Instead, it annoyed Progressives.

The reason all of this is more interesting than just a regional contest is that Hillary Clinton (another New Yorker, at least since 2001) may have to run the same gamut. Clinton is a little weak on her left side, being demonstrably more hawkish than both Barack Obama and the party as a whole, and also being a lot more friendly with Wall Street and Big Business than is considered seemly these days among the Democratic base. Hillary Clinton has never noticeably shifted much from her husband's "New Democrat" positions, to put this another way (although she certainly might in the heat of an election, to give her the benefit of the doubt). Hillary Clinton helped Cuomo campaign against Teachout, which some New Yorkers might remember in 2016.

It is hard to gauge the proportional importance of the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party, though, so it is premature at best to speak of how 2016 is going to play out. Progressives do not wield anywhere near the power within their party that the Tea Party faction of Republicans enjoy. There has always been a faction of Democrats who fervently wish that the national party (and their national candidates) would champion Main Street over Wall Street more often (see: Howard Dean). They have always been a minority within the party, though, and they likely still are. How much of a minority, in New York, may become apparent later tonight.

Still, Progressives can't be completely written off as somehow irrelevant to the Democratic Party as a whole. Not by a long shot. If this were true, there would be no Mayor de Blasio. And Andrew Cuomo wouldn't have had to shift his positions to gain party support. This is the current value -- incremental though it may be -- of the Progressives to the Democratic Party. Progressives are showing that they are not content anymore to just be "one part of the Democratic coalition which joins to support the major candidate," but instead are now willing to put up primary challengers against pre-chosen candidates. This fueled the Tea Party's rise to power, but it's an unfair comparison because (again) Progressives are nowhere near as powerful within the Democratic Party as the Tea Partiers are in the Republican Party.

There will likely be a Progressive favorite running for president in 2016, though. The Democratic primaries are going to produce at least one (possibly more) candidate who stands firmly to the left of where Hillary Clinton is comfortable standing. Bernie Sanders has expressed some interest in becoming this person, although Elizabeth Warren (another prime candidate) likely will sit this one out. I could even see Joe Biden attacking Hillary from the left. Or, just as plausibly, it could turn out to be someone not currently on anyone's radar inside the Beltway.

How Clinton reacts is going to be interesting, to say the least. She's already run one campaign where a relative no-name challenger knocked her off her stride (to say the least), so she will likely be a lot more attentive to such a possibility this time around (watch for her political team to fight strongly against any suggestion that she considers herself the "inevitable" candidate, for example). Clinton, in an ideal world (with an ideal 2016 nomination campaign), would much prefer to play it safe on contentious issues, and either attempt to laugh them off or repeat platitudes carefully designed to appeal to everyone. A strong Progressive challenger might preclude this option, though.

Which is why, regional contest and foregone conclusion though it may be, I will be interested to see what the margin of the vote will be in New York tonight. Will the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party begin an outward growth from New York City? Or will it remain in the gadfly category for most national Democratic strategists? Progressivism (or Populism, if you will) has some planks in their platform which are wildly popular among the American electorate. Democrats have been content, for the most part, to offer up lip service to these issues and then conveniently forget about them when the hard bargaining takes place in Washington over must-pass bills. Voters have become accustomed to one major party all but admitting they don't care about the little guy (because their political philosophy is "give the big guy lots of money and everyone will eventually be happy"), and the other party mouthing bromides about helping the little guy out -- but only seldom following suit on such promises. A strong Progressive showing could signal a shift in this scenario, however.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant