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

On 8/13/2026 2:25 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:06:00 -0400, Wilson <[email protected]>
> 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>
> 
> Oh, my, a tiny bit of sanity.  How mystifying.
>
So, it's come to this:

Francesca Hong, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib are the 
measure of sanity in US politics today.
 >

>>
>> 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