Re: Francesca Hong’s defeat won’t stop the Democratic Socialists

On 8/12/2026 11:35 AM, Julian wrote:
> 
> So, at time of writing, it looks as if voters don’t want to cancel 
> Thanksgiving – on balance, at least. Come November, however, few 
> Democrats will be expressing gratitude for their party’s vote-tabulation 
> systems.
> 
> Francesca Hong, it seems, will not be America’s first avowedly socialist 
> state governor. She appears to have just lost an extremely tight primary 
> to David Crowley, a Milwaukee County executive, in the gubernatorial 
> primary in Wisconsin.


Woke 2

The Democratic Party is, I think obviously, undergoing an historic 
radicalization. Woke 2, a playful framing for what is clearly 
unapologetic Marxism, is, if unchallenged, the future. But before we can 
unpack this new, cooler woke, which promises to jail the rich and steal 
their things before it targets the white middle class (the 
“bourgeoisie,” they call this), we unfortunately do have to jump through 
the first traditional media hoop: does this very real thing, which all 
of us see, actually exist?

You’ll be happy to hear that NY Mag is on the case, and there is 
absolutely nothing to see here:

“Cherry-picking controversial past statements or social-media posts from 
a handful of candidates and then inflating their numbers astronomically 
is required to sustain any sort of red-wave hypothesis. Are there DSA 
members (not candidates, but rank-and-file members) who are Marxist, in 
the sense of viewing political and economic life through the lens of 
class struggle? Yes, there are, much as there are rank-and-file members 
of the GOP who by any conventional definition are proto-fascist. That 
Marxists define the Democratic Party as a whole is ludicrous. And by the 
way, these allegedly terrifying progressives are winning primaries by 
appealing to voters in free elections, which was not a tactic favored by 
Bolsheviks.” 
<https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/the-gops-big-red-scare-is-really-stupid.html> 


While the movement gains strength, it’s unclear if the center left is in 
denial or trying to obscure it all on purpose as we inch toward the 
general election. But their argument, at this point common, stands on 
two flimsy pillars. First, the position that socialism is not actually 
ascendant in the Democratic Party. Then, the position that the DSA, 
while radical, is merely the left’s own MAGA, on par with a mass of 
unnamed "rank-and-file" members of the GOP, who are "proto-fascist." 
While NY Mag feels no responsibility to actually name these apparently 
abundant fascists in the GOP, or any of their beliefs, I’ll just assume 
they’re talking about Trump, to whom we’ll return in a moment.

Now, is the radicalization happening? NY Mag suggests "just three 
members of the Democratic Socialists of America have won congressional 
primaries," which is distorted to the point I have to say I think their 
intention must be deception.

At present, there are two sitting members of the DSA in Congress, 
including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and living, breathing, walking 
"build the wall" advertisement Rashida Tlaib. But there are hundreds of 
DSA members in government, which Wikipedia has done a helpful job 
tracking. In terms of primary victories, other than the aforementioned 
two candidates who are both running and favored to win, Chris Rabb (PA), 
Melat Kiros (CO), Brad Lander (NY), Claire Valdez (NY), Darializa Avila 
Chevalier (NY), and Donavan McKinney (MI) are all headed to the general. 
Mai Vang (CA), while she didn’t win outright, is headed to the general. 
Oliver Larkin (FL) has a good chance of advancing to the general. Then 
of course there’s media superstar Abdul El-Sayed (MI), who rejects the 
term socialist but supports the nationalization of large swaths of the 
technology industry, and secured a DSA endorsement reserved for 
candidates who share the DSA platform. He just won his primary race for 
Senate.

The DSA’s national victories, all organized and coordinated under the 
banner of socialism, would alone constitute a movement. But what few on 
the "moderate" left are willing to face are the DSA victories in local 
politics, which are already transforming our country.

Janeese Lewis George took her primary in DC, and is now running in the 
general for Mayor this November, while Nithya Raman took her primary in 
LA. There is, of course, Zohran Mamdani, who now not only runs New York, 
the largest and wealthiest city in our country, but does so with 
tremendous support in City Council. There, as in New York’s State 
Assembly, nearly the entire DSA slate won. The socialists have secured 
further victories in cities spanning Los Angeles, where they are 
especially dominant, Buffalo, Syracuse, Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis, 
Jersey City, Louisville, and… Poughkeepsie.

Lovely. Now what do they believe?

In order to secure a DSA endorsement, candidates must adhere to the 
DSA’s national policy program. This of course includes all the fan 
favorites: total student debt forgiveness, reparations, closing all 
overseas military bases, and phasing out the use of fossil fuels. But 
positions that sound so totally insane I’m afraid most people assume I’m 
exaggerating when I talk about them include: abolition of the police and 
prisons, abolition of the Electoral College, abolition of the U.S. 
Senate, Supreme Court, and presidency, and the nationalization of all 
major industry in the country. The DSA of course demands a national 
"wealth tax," which effectively abolishes our right to private property 
(a case I made in detail for Pirate Wires). And finally, they promise to 
draft a new Constitution. What do you think, guys, will Hasan Piker’s 
Dumb Bitch Politburo let us keep our right to speech?

Wait.

Do you hear that?

It’s the fevered clacking of 10,000 abundance libs furiously typing in 
response.

"BUT WHAT ABOUT TRUMP!"

Okay, sure. Let’s address the giant blonde hairpiece in the room.

Facing the twin horrors of the DSA, including both their stated beliefs 
and their clear ascendance within the DNC, self-described "centrists" 
and Democratic Party "moderates" face a difficult problem. On paper, 
they should be completely opposed to what is by all accounts an 
authoritarian takeover of their party with clearly the intention of 
abolishing our current government and replacing it with something 
altogether Marxist. But they’ve already gone and made opposition to 
Trump, the spiritual head of the Republican Party, their entire 
political identity. This is how we’ve arrived at the absolute dumbest 
incarnation of this conversation, which reduces to something like "but 
Trump is just as bad."

You don’t like Trump or his policies. That’s fine. But Trump has 
actually not made any gesture whatsoever in the direction of abolishing 
every branch of power in the country but his own. This is not real. This 
is a liberal rape fantasy.

You’re perfectly entitled to not like Trump. To hate him. To truly 
believe he is the worst president in history. To believe he is 
legitimately dangerous, even. But what you can really not say is that 
he’s radical, or at least not in the sense we speak of in consideration 
of the DSA, which is seeking — explicitly — to abolish our government 
and replace it with something fundamentally new.

Trump denies the results of the election. Okay. I denied the results of 
George W. Bush’s election, along with most Democrats in the country, 
pretty much throughout his presidency. What else do you have? Tariffs? 
That’s just a policy you don’t like. Understandably! It may be wrong, 
but it’s not radical. Mass deportation? I get that you love immigration, 
and think illegal immigration is actually, on net, good for the economy, 
and the economy is all that really matters. I’m not here to debate that 
position. But deporting illegal immigrants is actually the law. If you 
don’t like the law, you can change it by winning elections. And 
following the law is not a revolution.

Then, I guess people are really dying to know what I think about the war 
in Iran. A treat for you: I hate it! I think it’s bad! Though I 
admittedly have no idea what information Trump is working from, I 
generally believe war sucks and we should try our best to never do it. 
But in terms of norms, I’m having a hard time understanding how this act 
is "revolutionary" given America has been in some form of war for 
literally my entire life.

Rule by executive order is unhealthy, and I agree the culture of our 
executive drafting magic spells and casting law into the country is out 
of hand. You can thank FDR for that, and then Obama who brought that 
culture back. But you’ll notice our courts have routinely intervened to 
halt executive orders, and when Trump receives a negative ruling he 
simply trashes it and moves on to the next Diet Coke. He has not 
dissolved the courts. He did not run on a platform of dissolving the 
courts. He has not written down his intention to dissolve the courts. He 
is not leading a well-coordinated army of young congressional candidates 
themselves committed to dissolving the courts.

DSA candidates are, right now, running on a platform of dissolving the 
Supreme Court. If they win, they will not succeed because they do not 
yet have the power to succeed. But if the radicalization of the DNC 
proceeds, this country will not survive.

Trump has done many things I either don’t agree with, or can’t stand. I 
hated when he, to my eye, mocked the death of Rob Reiner, which I 
consider disgusting and coarsening of our culture in a way that has 
helped normalize the kind of bloodlust we’re seeing most especially, and 
to the greatest consequence, from the populist left — where actual calls 
for murder, and full-throated defense and celebration of political 
assassination is now routine. But surely you can believe this man is a 
terrible human as well as a terrible president, while understanding the 
distinction between those things and the ascendance of a movement in the 
DNC to dissolve the government.

My point here is not even that the DSA is bad (though, holy shit, 
they’re really bad). My point is only that the DSA is radical, by which 
I mean their goal is not to reform our institutions or to bend our 
institutions to their will, but to replace them with a new form of 
government. These are authoritarians, by which I do not mean "guy who 
makes me mad." I am actually just looking at their policy proposals and 
explaining to you who they are, in their own language.

We are well beyond a simple disagreement on tax policy, or immigration. 
This isn’t a conversation about gay marriage or abortion. We are 
litigating the actual structure of our government. Face that. And if you 
side with the people who are seeking to replace our government with 
something altogether new and explicitly Marxist, you aren’t just a guy 
we disagree with anymore.

-SOLANA