State Sen. Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is, in a word, wacko. The fact that she will probably win the Democrats' Wisconsin governor primary on Tuesday tells us a lot about the Democratic Party and where they are on the political suicide watch.
Hong is running on a platform that includes raising the minimum wage from $7.50 to $20 an hour. Her "tax the rich" plan includes raising state income taxes by 1% for couples making over $431,000 and individuals making over $323,000. She also espouses the usual panoply of DSA "freebies," including Medicare for All, free child care, and guarantees of universal free, healthy school meals; establishing universal childcare with capped or zero out-of-pocket costs; and anchoring public school teacher salaries to state legislators' compensation.
Standard socialist pablum. Those proposals aren't really the problem. Before she "evolved" and "learned" (her words), she called to "defund then abolish" the police, writing that law enforcement exists to "uphold white supremacy" and advocating for closing prisons. She also called to "cancel Thanksgiving" (arguing against celebrating colonialism) and criticized Valentine's Day as a product of capitalism.
She called for abolishing the U.S. Senate due to the distortion of representation. Thomas Jefferson also objected to the fact that small states had equal representation in the Senate, but the inclusion of a Senate was a critical compromise with small states that felt their interests were being shortchanged in the House. Hong doesn't want a Senate because it has historically been a brake on radical proposals.
Her campaign argued that she never formally introduced or campaigned on an official policy platform to abolish the Senate. She didn't have to. It's a prominent plank in the DSA platform.
Hong dismissed her toxic social media posts as "bad takes."
"You have some hot takes, sometimes bad takes on Twitter," Hong said about the post. "And I let my feelings out into the world." Diarrhea of the mouth is not a "bad take." And do Wisconsin voters really want a brain-dead governor spouting her "feelings into the world"?
Hong is so toxic that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) refused to endorse her and refuse to be seen with her. I doubt whether they disagree with many of her radical policy positions. They're just good enough politicians to recognize the catastrophe of appearing to agree with her.
Then there's the coward's way out. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pulled a "Sgt. Schultz" and claimed ignorance.
“I don’t know her,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told Politico in a brief hallway interview.
Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, along with their advisers, say they’re more focused on control of Congress, and rarely endorse in state-level contests. But their lack of involvement, or even public encouragement of Hong’s campaign, could foretell just how immense a task Hong faces as she tries to convince moderate Democrats, independents and even people within her own progressive movement that she’s electable in November against Donald Trump-backed Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany.
General elections in the battleground state have been determined by extremely narrow margins in recent years. Trump won the battleground state in 2024 by just shy of 30,000 votes. Joe Biden won it by fewer than 21,000 votes in 2020.
Some Democratic officials in Wisconsin privately note Republicans have a big opportunity to hammer Hong on democratic socialism, which had a net negative rating among all registered voters in a July Marquette Law School poll.
The former GOP governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, made several appearances with Tiffany and tried out several applause lines that Republicans can use on the hustings against all the Democrats.
"I think what Francesca Hong stands for is the antithesis of America," Youngkin said. "She wants to defund police, close prisons. She wants to get rid of the military. She wants to get rid of the presidency. I mean, these are all the things that the DSA stands for, and she is a card-carrying member."
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"[Tiffany] is what's gonna be on the ballot against someone who literally wants to deconstruct America," Youngkin said. "This is what this election eventually is gonna be about — common sense against crazy."
Put "common sense against crazy" on 50 million bumper stickers and let it play across the country. It's the GOP's most potent attack. Republicans are mostly normies battling the DSA crazies. It might not play in East and West Coast districts, but it's a nuclear bomb everywhere else.
It doesn't matter if the less radical Democrats disavow the DSA. The tar baby of socialism has the Democrats well and truly stuck. If they start disavowing socialism, they have to disavow two or three dozen candidates. And if they don't disavow socialism, anything is fair game.
Staying on this message is critical. If the GOP can make that case, it will even the odds in a difficult political year.
Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
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