Moses’s attack killed New York State’s best chance at a Good Government movement

Evidence

Now, of course, such hopes were dead. The chance to unify reform sentiment in the state and make it a force capable of influencing state decisions was gone. In fact, it was to be gone indefinitely. A half century later, with the sole exception of the single-sex League of Women Voters, New York would still have no statewide Good Government organization. In later years, it was impossible for Childs, who deeply admired Moses, to escape the feeling that Moses’ actions had killed the best chance for a Good Government movement that New York State ever had. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 592

Categorization

• QUESTION: Caro asserts a strong counterfactual: that absent this one episode a durable statewide reform movement could have formed. Worth interrogating given how many structural obstacles Childs already faced.