Amazon was ready to impose its will on the largest city in America. The trillion dollar corporation had lined up the support of the mayor of New York City and the governor of New York, and began hiring the fleet of well-compensated lobbyists and strategists necessary to see its vision through.

It was a typical American story: a corporation with unfathomable wealth getting exactly what it wanted. Amazon would promise 25,000 jobs, many of them supposedly well-paying, and get its gleaming second headquarters, along with a buffet of tax breaks that added up to $3bn, generous subsidies it never really needed but sure wanted.

On Thursday, that all changed. After unrelenting pressure from politicians and an energized grassroots movement that drove these politicians to act, Amazon has said no more. The company is walking away from New York. It’s taking its ball and going home.

This is not just about New York now. Amazon’s retreat may represent a turning point in the way cities do business – or think they can do business in this age of income inequality and precarity. Amazon is one of five corporations that utterly dominate the economy, deciding how we shop, what prices we pay, and what leverage most businesses can or can’t have.

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Amazon has eviscerated brick-and-mortar retailers, broken countless unionization efforts, offered its facial recognition technology to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and, for anyone who cares about the written word, tried to crush the publishing industry. Amazon’s surrender is a warning to all Democrats who want to occupy the progressive flank from here on out: you don’t get to support a company like this anymore.

Amazon’s defeat was a direct product of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election, which was waged in a neighboring district. Younger, progressive residents joined forces with groups like the Democratic Socialists of America to mobilize against Amazon and pressure more moderate Democrats to quickly close ranks against the corporate titan. They did.

The weather has now changed. You don’t get to champion unions out of one side of your mouth and praise a company that loathes them with the other. You don’t get to bemoan economic exploitation and welcome a corporation that thrives on it. You don’t get to say on the stump you support small businesses, fair play, and good government while embracing a company that negotiates in secret, tries to circumvent the democratic process, and undercuts as many competitors as it can.

Amazon is a monopoly, a product of this new and twisted Gilded Age. Like Apple, it flourishes on an exploited, low-wage workforce that is mostly invisible to the average American. Like Google and Facebook, its market share is unrivaled. There is no competing with Amazon. It will swallow you whole before you try.

The national competition for the second Amazon headquarters, or HQ2, in 2017 represented a certain economic nadir for the country. Dozens of municipalities battled against one another in a race to the bottom, offering absurd tax breaks in the hopes that Amazon would deem them worthy. An HQ, unlike a warehouse, needs a more educated workforce, so New York was always a logical destination.

American cities have long, regrettable histories of subsidizing highly profitable corporations and entities that don’t need such breaks. Precious dollars for roads, schools, and housing are denied in taxes that are never paid. In turn, municipalities are just supposed to be grateful for this welfare, praying daily the corporation doesn’t deign to pack its bags and go elsewhere.

Too many politicians have been complicit in this game, Democrats especially. While Amazon will continue to poll “well” – Americans prize cheap and convenient consumption – politicians, especially those running for president, should not use this as an excuse to defend Amazon or look the other way. The “pro-business” Democrat is the anti-worker Democrat—at least in the era we live in now.

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The only businesses that really matter are these mega-corporations, and most of them find democracy inconvenient. If they can obliterate the remnants of organized labor in this country, they will.

Since Donald Trump, beyond sliming Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for running the Washington Post, has no serious interest in breaking up corporate monopolies, it will fall to the next Democratic president to do so. All of the contenders, like Elizabeth Warren, must articulate clear anti-trust platforms and speak forcefully on behalf of the American worker.

Amazon must become a defining issue of this campaign, because it’s not going anywhere. Bezos will hunt for his tax breaks elsewhere. He will continue to accumulate wealth. Candidates must shun his business and say why. Then, and only then, will we exit this neo-Gilded Age for something better.