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

On 8/13/2026 11:06 AM, Wilson wrote:
> 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
> 
"I'm not voting for anyone who thinks the wrong side won the Cold War or 
cheers for the Intifada like it's the World Cup." - Bill Maher