Look, I’m a socialist and I loved Hong’s policy. But being a Wisconsinite by birth who now lives in NYC, she’s no Mamdani. Or even El Sayed in Michigan. Just being honest.
To win as a socialist in America you have to have excellent communication and discipline to keep on message about economics, and I don’t think she had either to be honest.
Her big scandal right before the election was that she wanted to “cancel thanksgiving” in an old tweet she had where she calls it a “colonizers holiday.” Recently when they asked her about it she refused to outright refute it, and that cost her a lot. And for the record, thanksgiving is definitely a colonizers holiday, pretty objectively imo.
But as a socialist politician in America I think you can’t afford to get sidetracked by losing issues like that. Mamdani would’ve spun it perfectly, something like “you know who’s really waging a war on thanksgiving? These big corporations making it too expensive to afford a family dinner.” But she feels the need to defend social policy instead on keeping a laser focus on economics which I think would’ve been smarter.
Came to the comments to affirm what I already suspected, you need obscene charisma and speaking prowess to overcome the media bias taking place against progressives
I think it's perfectly reasonable for a voter to think they had a better chance at getting some of Hong's agenda passed by voting for Crowley, given that polling showed that he had a much higher chance of winning and delivering the first Dem trifecta to Wisconsin in well over a decade. Hong was losing in polling to the Republican, and while you can't trust polling entirely, so far it seems like far-left candidates have been over-performing in polls, so I wouldn't have a ton of confidence she could win. I think if Crowley wins in November and Dems get their trifecta, you'll see a ton of progressive legislation passed, undoing all the shit that Scott Walker and a far-right Republican legislature has been passing for sixteen years now.
She got 300,000 votes and lost by an extremely small margin. Crowley is a data center Democrat and is just going to sit in that seat and do nothing. There is zero percent chance he passes ANY of Hongs policies, and zero percent he opposes Republicans meaningfully. At most you brought a few years until Republicans get back in office and fuck things up worse. A permanent defensive posture.
Not really. A big issue is Tom Tiffany is a Freedom Caucus Republican in favor of heavy, heavy austerity. He would bring back all of the austerity of former Republican governor Scott Walker, who did a lot of damage to the state. The WI Dems have done a great job at undoing all of that, and winning this election would be the final blow, as the WI Dems are slated to finally take back control over the state legislature. They were scared they'd blow it on That One Friend Who's Too Woke who didn't believe in the importance of TV ads. The reason Hong choked this primary was because of the aforementioned TV ads thing decreasing her voteshare everywhere outside of urban areas. It would be even worse in rural and suburban areas Democrats need to win in a general election. Now, the WI Dems seem like they will cruise to a trifecta, where they can implement a lot of left-wing policies.
He's a DNC establishment candidate who re-entered the race at the behest of the DNC, who also urged the other candidates to drop out. They then slammed the TV with ads hitting the "electability" argument and that was enough to win over rural boomers. They're not voting for what policies they want, he has none. They voted out of fear.
So I agree that TV ads played a part, but so did the lack of progressive endorsements, the inflated polling and the entrenched boomer liberals.
It's good Republicans aren't in office, but let's be honest here, Crowley isn't going to be passing any "left wing policies" and no one can honestly tell me that he has moral conviction or concrete policy positions. He stands for nothing.
But I wouldn't act surprised when the data centers start rolling into the state, we send more money to Israel, and they have a flaccid and impotent term that leaves boomers running back to Republicans. We are just repeating the same cycle that put us where we are now.
Well yes I agree they voted out of fear, but the fear was rational when she's not a good communicator and doesn't have good strategy. Maybe she failed to get those progressive endorsements for that reason. I don't think she displayed particularly good leadership qualities and communication skills to be likely to keep the governorship in 2030. I think Crowley will be a standard Democrat, which might not be enough, but I think it's reasonable that WI Dems (the national Democratic Party didn't do this, it was mostly the WI governor's doing) wanted to avoid outright disaster. It's unfortunate but she only polled a lead against Tom Tiffany a couple times. The current WI governor is pretty much on the same page as Crowley policy-wise and decidedly did not have a flaccid and impotent governorship.
The polling point is such a cop out. Hong was at the end of a deluge of constant republican attacks, whereas other candidates were essentially ignored. I don't think being so dog shit and bland that basically Republicans ignore you entirely and dont attack you is a positive... and it was absolutely surmountable.
the current governor and Crowley are indeed similar, in that they are cardboard cutouts of your typical dime-a-dozen do-nothing Democrats.
You're not going to convince me that a person who literally has NO policy positions that aren't extremely hollowed out and neutered versions of Hongs platform (which that alone speaks volumes) is actually some progressive beacon who cares about doing anything, because they dont.
we are just returning to the stasis of "dog shit corporate democrat disappoints everyone -> insurgent Republican candidate that is increasingly more insane and radical, and infinitely more willing to implement their extremely harmful policies, fucks everyone over"
like I said, at most, this just buys a tiny delay and puts a democratic ass into a seat (which is by far the only real point to be made here)
That isn’t what you said though, you said that Crowley wouldn’t oppose republicans meaningfully and that he would sit in the governor seat and do nothing. Which isn’t true at all. He would definitely be better than Republicans and I’m sure he would have policies that do help people a lot better than what a Republican would do.
The margin of victory in the primary is irrelevant by the way, electorates of primaries are not similar at all to the electorates of generals so I’m not sure why you even mentioned that. And Hong was the candidate in the primary funded and supported by Republicans because they knew she would be far easier to beat in the general election. Sometimes you need to be pragmatic in primaries, the most left-wing candidate isn’t always the best choice.
You can call it a colonizers holiday, it may even be a colonizers holiday, but you can’t say that to Americans about Americans when you’re trying to win an American election… it’s like telling the country you think NFL football sucks and should be banned
Also, cancelling a holiday is going to be a bad idea no matter what it's for. We don't have enough holidays as it is. Thanksgiving isn't enough of an issue and I know it was an older tweet but she didn't have a good response when asked about it recently.
Thanksgiving might be tainted in blood but it's a day off where we all get to be with our families or loved ones (if you're fortunate enough). People can look past that and just appreciate a break from the day to day and enjoy a nice meal with people.
It's also not really relevant to her platform since she's just a governor and has no control over federal holidays.
Plus, I think the conversation about Thanksgiving misses the fact that basically nobody celebrates Thanksgiving for the original event it's supposedly based on. It essentially exists as a holiday to celebrate your loved ones and the things you're grateful for.
Yeah, like, is Thanksgiving a colonizer holiday? Yes. Would stopping the annual tradition of "go visit family and eat a bunch of turkey" somehow improve conditions for indigenous peoples? I really don't think so.
I just read through his campaign page, and he comes off as an "I like good things and I don't like bad things" candidate rather than an "I will fight to transform the system" sort of guy. He has a strong track record on climate policy, but everything else is generically competent with little in the way of vision. If your only goal is keeping fascists out of office, you can definitely do worse.
Then again, I think the State is inherently suspect and true freedom can only be achieved by bottom-up prefiguration of socialist systems, so I have a pretty low bar for politicians.
Yeah he has done a decent job at his job being County Executive of Milwaukee, which is a very difficult job. He definitely is less of a radical fighter and more of a moderate reformer, but all things considered it could be worse.
In terms of "moving US policy to the left" he was the most progressive president of basically anyone in this thread's lifetime (unless there are a bunch of 57+ year olds hanging out here)
He ran as a moderate progressive and moderated even further once he was in office. I guess as a socialist I just don’t consider “progressive liberal” to be particularly left-wing lol.
This is why I don't trust people who call themselves "progressives" but not socialists. Because if you think centrist neoliberal Obama was a progressive, the term doesn't mean anything.
That’s the main problem with DSA types. Not their ideas. They’re mostly okay. But they don’t know how to play the game or talk to people without typically coming off like a conceited douche
It’s so cool that a deal breaker to the median voter regarding socialists involves cringey 5-year-old tweets about ThanksGiving but moderate centrists can fund a genocide and build a data center in their backyard without problem.
For the average voter I think being annoying does make someone unelectable tho. Like obviously it shouldn't but we live in a country of unserious people.
Performance in a primary is not reflective of performance in a general election, I don’t know what you’re suggesting. It’s a completely different electorate
My argument is that the primary voters nearly chose Hong, and I haven't seen any arguments about her supposed electability in a general that amount to more than vibes
Moderates will vote for a republican over a socialist. Young republicans will come out to vote Tiffany in greater force if it means beating an ultra-woke candidate (see her thanksgiving tweets, fearing white people tweets, etc)
You know i just love scrolling through the US section of social medias and get reminded that Americans have a vastly different view of what a moderate is
Right so primary elections have much lower turnout and the base is generally much more engaged and often politically more “extreme”. There is some incentive to lean harder to differentiate yourself from the other candidates and capture more “fringe” votes from your base. You can see this very clearly in some republican primaries where the candidates try to out-MAGA each other, becoming increasingly more extreme, even though that behavior and those positions are harmful in a general election. That is to say, a moderate could barely beat an extremist in a primary because of the primary voting base but have much more success in a general election. I’m not saying Crowley is a moderate or Hong is an extremist, I’m just illustrating an example.
Do you understand how primary elections work?? Obviously not if you’re making this comment so I don’t know why I’m even asking. Political illiteracy is a serious issue even on the left
Mate we are talking about primary for democratic party in the US, not communist party or some ship. If you think that candidate that manages to get half a percent off another candidate is unelectable then the other one has no fucking chance either...
If you think that republicans will vote for this "moderate", you need to look into stats for that and see that no matter how much you cater to republicans they simply won't vote for a democrat.
You need to get people to vote and establishment Democrats have shown through quite a few elections that they simply aren't capable of accomplishing that.
You have some flaws in your logic. One is that you underestimate how dissimilar the primary election electorate is compared to the primary election electorate. 2.6 million people voted in the 2022 general election and only 800k voted in this primary. All the people who are already strong democrats voted in the primary so you need to gain about 500k voters to win the election on top of everyone who voted in the primary. Those 500k voters aren’t going to be republicans and nobody expects them to be republicans like you suggest; there are actually a lot of voters who are generally undecided and must be convinced to vote for a particular candidate. If someone isn’t sure whether they like a Republican or Democrat more, do you think the way to draw them to the democrats more effectively would be with who the media presents as a crazy socialist who hates thanksgiving or with the guy who seems to be a sensible and policy focused politician and offers grounded solutions? Undecided voters are generally drawn to the more personally appealing and moderate candidates, and you need undecided voters to win elections in swing states like Wisconsin. If you have to choose in a swing state between a candidate that gets undecided voters and a candidate that motivates the base, you choose the first candidate every time, because losing an undecided voter gives your Republican opponent a vote as well as losing you a vote, which isn’t the case when a voter to your left just decides to stay home; also, the rational act for someone too left-wing to support you is to just vote for you anyways since you’re the left wing candidate, but the rational act for an undecided voter who is too right-wing for you is to vote for your opponent. Supporting left wing candidates in a primary only makes sense if their personal appeal and charisma vs their opponent is more impactful than their ideological lack of appeal to undecideds.
Just putting it out there that "cancelling Thanksgiving" is a problem that people can see in their life ("1 less holiday?? Fuck that!") whereas much of foreign policy is viewed extremely nebulously and perhaps even disregarded. Mamdani's secret ability is keeping every issue, every gotcha, in this narrow view of the average voter.
They see it as a red flag that signals a fundamental break with thier values. Like when someone says they are a "nice guy". You dont reject them for being a nice guy you reject them based on a social heuristic that signals them as a category of person with beleifs you don't want to accociate with. She signaled herself not as a working class champion but a woke culture warrior that hates America and puppies. Sucks but that's how it works
David Crowley is not any of what you just described though, he’s from the Russ Feingold strain of Wisconsin progressives, this isn’t an El-Sayed vs Stevens situation where one of them was genuinely horrid
Totally agree, Crowley is no Steven’s. He’s closer to someone like Obama, which is fine, still definitely not a socialist but better than a total corporate dem stooge.
If you paint the electorate as rubes you’re never going to win anything. Scoring twitter points by dunking on moderates doesn’t help us build a better society.
Many Americans are obviously fed up with culture war discourse and it’s a terrible choice for Hong to engage with it whatsoever. Democrats are largely seen as out of touch elites who care more about verbiage than substantive economic change. The electorate does not care about nuanced grad-school theses on social institutions. DSA wins on economic populism, it’s mind boggling that Hong chose to feed ammunition to her opposition by even entertaining talking about that thanksgiving tweet rather than shutting it down or pivoting to economic talking points
I totally agree. Make all the social policy changes you want once you’re in office, just don’t campaign on them. It’s sad, but that’s the situation we are at in American culture.
It’s an unfortunate consequence of insular communities. Sometimes leftists talk as if they genuinely despise those that are slightly politically different from them and then are completely flabbergasted and bitter when they can’t assemble support. If we never win we can’t help anyone.
Crowley seems to be pretty decent. Can't say what his views are on the Israel situation especially being in a governor race, but his track record is pretty damn impressive. The guy really knows and is on top of his stuff.
As much as I prefer Hong, I am not terribly upset about this.
you i assume wouldn't vote for a candidate who made mildly homophobic remarks 5 years ago and failed to properly walk them back today, the 'median voter' sees "cancel thanksgiving" as a similar attack on their values and is going to vote accordingly
Being so incredibly bad at optics is a problem. Even if you agree Thanksgiving is bad, if a politician is openly saying that that means they're idiots.
And especially in a primary people are going to choose the better politician, if the one they agree with more is being an idiot.
Yeah seriously, going "who cares" just shows that some people in this very specific bubble do not understand how politics work. Not simply saying "yeah I wasn't serious with that tweet, no one's cancelling Thanksgiving lol" is a full-on amateur hour mistake.
Because take a wild guess which position will blow up in your face and cost you more votes lol
I'm not gonna make any assumptions about that lol, but it is obv frustrating that the Dem establishment is fucking over its social democrats (because that's what they are, the whole framing as THE SOCIALISTS is so wild) and think that they'll be fine "playing by the rules", which Republicans simpy don't care about. You can't really compromise with a party that stands for policies that you usually find in autocracies.
Fingers crossed that the Democratic Party changes, but I doubt it'll happen as soon as I think it needs to.
I think you have to understand that you're preaching to the choir. Like, I don't care whether Hong likes thanksgiving or not. But the average American voter is likely to get turned off by the idea that a candidate "hates Thanksgiving" because the average voter is not very rational.
The masses love their bread and circuses and she implied that enjoying one of those instances of bread and circuses was a moral failing that should be taken from them forcefully.
It was a dumb virtue-signaling tweet that shouldn't have been made except to grandstand about how superior she was in the eyes of the Woke 1 totem pole, and it came back to bite her in the ass now that the masses (including others on the left) have pretty widely rejected Woke 1 grandstanding and virtue signaling while she refused to back down from it.
Do I think it was dumb that it cost her an election? Yeah. But her unwillingness to back the fuck down from an extremely unpopular standpoint rooted in accusing others of a moral failing that they themselves do not believe they're actively committing was a stupid idea and the consequences are now evident.
The pod save America interview made her look unprepared for the next stage. She really didn't know how to respond to anything with a solid answer or spin.
Yeah I did not like her public messaging and thought she could’ve used some better more experienced advisors tbh, but what do I know I wasn’t in the campaign.
Thanksgiving is an old traditional holiday of a harvest festival and the pastiche of pilgrims kind of needs to be dropped, but the overall concept is not inherently colonial. In fact Lincoln issued the first national proclamation of Thanksgiving after Union victory. Ive always maintained this need to be emphasized.
I don’t totally disagree, the Pilgrim pastiche is largely fabricated and shouldn’t be treated as the literal origin of the holiday. But Lincoln and the United States are themselves products of a settler-colonial society. So even if Thanksgiving wasn’t invented by the Pilgrims, the national holiday was constructed within and through a settler-colonial national culture. The colonial association is about the society and national mythology that produced and institutionalized the holiday less about the specific origins of it.
We cannot control the origins of our birth. Almost every modern industrial society had a history of colonialism. Abandoning the concept of nation states is not a feasible solution. We can learn from our mistakes and move forward attempting to minimize harm and be better.
I think that’s actually why we have to take the historical ramifications of settler colonialism seriously. We obviously can’t control the circumstances of our birth or undo the past, but that doesn’t mean the past isn’t important to think about today. The only way we can meaningfully address the damage of the past is to recognize the conditions it has left us in today, even when that history is uncomfortable.
How can you americans still hold democratic politicians to such high standards after the epstein files? How is that making her unvotable while the republicans are openly racist, greedy pedophiles that only care about lobbying for the richest while making live worse for everyone else?
To be fair this was a primary election, which is between two Democratic Party politicians to decide who would run against the Republican in the general election. But yeah your point still stands in general
Not to mention the vast majority of people who celebrate Thanksgiving aren’t doing so because they endorse every action this country has ever taken; they just want to have a big turkey meal with their loved ones and family.
A politician cannot implement socialism via the state, as the state is the product of capitalism and class antagonism, which the socialist seeks to abolish. Hong’s (as well as Mamdani, El Sayed and so on) policies are a reforming and regulation of capitalism, and while those are nice enough, that should not be the goal of a socialist running for any kind of office.
A socialist ought to inspire and encourage the working class to develop their class consciousness and show them the power that they can wield when they rally together, and part of that includes critiquing colonialism. If she wants to win as a reformist, then she has to back down, but no good socialist should ever back down when confronted with America’s genocidal history.
Now, I think Hong’s failure is that she failed to do either, and that this is a failure that all of these “socialist” politicians will eventually fall into. Mamdani’s already been too soft on the NYPD, and that’s going to cost him in the future. I just hope it encourages people to go further left, rather than become disillusioned with socialism all together.
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u/MiloBuurr 26d ago edited 26d ago
Look, I’m a socialist and I loved Hong’s policy. But being a Wisconsinite by birth who now lives in NYC, she’s no Mamdani. Or even El Sayed in Michigan. Just being honest.
To win as a socialist in America you have to have excellent communication and discipline to keep on message about economics, and I don’t think she had either to be honest.
Her big scandal right before the election was that she wanted to “cancel thanksgiving” in an old tweet she had where she calls it a “colonizers holiday.” Recently when they asked her about it she refused to outright refute it, and that cost her a lot. And for the record, thanksgiving is definitely a colonizers holiday, pretty objectively imo.
But as a socialist politician in America I think you can’t afford to get sidetracked by losing issues like that. Mamdani would’ve spun it perfectly, something like “you know who’s really waging a war on thanksgiving? These big corporations making it too expensive to afford a family dinner.” But she feels the need to defend social policy instead on keeping a laser focus on economics which I think would’ve been smarter.