Francesca Hong’s narrow loss in Wisconsin has sparked a progressive blame game, with some on the Left arguing that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) could have tipped the Democratic gubernatorial primary in the socialist candidate’s favor.
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have campaigned heavily for antiestablishment Democrats this cycle, with their endorsements helping push outsiders, including both Dr. Abdul el Sayed in Michigan and Melat Kiros in Colorado, to primary victories.
Yet both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez stayed out of the Wisconsin governor’s race, a fact not lost on a number of Democrats in the wake of Francesca Hong‘s primary loss Tuesday night.
“Bernie Sanders and AOC not endorsing … might’ve cost her the Democratic Nomination,” Christopher Hale, an alumnus of the Obama White House, pointed out on X as the votes were beginning to be counted.
Our Revolution, a progressive advocacy group founded by Sanders a decade ago, similarly said that “we cannot build progressive power while gatekeeping our own movement through the eyes of the establishment.”
“Solidarity cannot be something we practice only after someone has proven they can win without us,” the group concluded.
Nathan Robinson, editor-in-chief of the left-leaning Current Affairs magazine, wrote Wednesday that both “Bernie and AOC are directly responsible for Hong’s loss.”
GOP CONGRESSMAN SAYS DEMOCRATS ‘STOLE’ ELECTION FROM SOCIALIST FRANCESCA HONG
“Instead of making the case for democratic socialist politics and getting more service workers like herself into office, AOC threw Hong under the bus as ‘crazy woke 1,’” he said in a Wednesday morning post on X. “Bernie pretended he didn’t know her!”
Two veteran progressive strategists, however, downplayed the endorsement question to the Washington Examiner, arguing that while some DSA or progressive candidates pull off establishment upsets, not all are guaranteed winners.
“I’m not sure if it would have made the definitive difference in the result, but we have to imagine that it would have made some difference, right?,” Randy Jackson, a veteran of Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign, explained. “That’s not to say that Bernie and AOC are obligated to jump in for every progressive running in every corner of the country. But that is to say that it’s hard to imagine their support wouldn’t have made some impact. Whether that means, you know, a change in the outcome or not, it’s hard to say.”
Jackson added that, even without national endorsements, “as close as it was,” Hong’s performance “should continue to worry establishment politicians and establishment forces.”
“This was a campaign that, in its own admission, had some communications challenges and could’ve handled some things differently, but still, almost won a statewide primary, again without a lot of that institutional help, and so again, I think what that means is that the Democratic establishment continues to find itself on the outside looking in to what is motivating many voters across the country,” Jackson said.
The second strategist argued that just because some “left-flank” candidates win in some races doesn’t guarantee all will perform to a winning level.
“Each one of these races are uniquely different,” that person suggested. “It comes down to voters being tuned in different ways.”
Hasan Piker, an avowed socialist whom people have referred to as the top surrogate for Hong’s campaign, similarly argued on his post-election night stream that Tuesday’s result was more so a positive reflection on the grassroots efforts of volunteers than an indictment of “national” progressives who didn’t offer endorsements.
Furthermore, he blamed establishment Democrats, including Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI), and the media for the loss.
“These motherf*****s undermined us,” he stated. “They talk big s***. They’re gonna keep doing it. By the way, they’re going to call us terrorists. They’re going to call us anti-Semites. They’re going to call us idealists, and eventually we’re gonna win. F*** them. We have one another. Let them chirp. They have no vision. They got no b*****s. They got no movement. They got the electability argument. And ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, this is not a bad thing. Because let’s be real, you know. [Milwaukee executive David] Crowley still, if he wins, is going to defeat [Rep.] Tom Tiffany (R-WI), and that’s a good thing.”
GOP CONGRESSMAN SAYS DEMOCRATS ‘STOLE’ ELECTION FROM SOCIALIST FRANCESCA HONG
Still, Piker did seem to suggest that national progressives shared some of the blame for the result.
“Yes, this is part of why we came close to a victory but ultimately lost. I should never be the biggest surrogate of a campaign,” he quote-tweeted a claim from former Biden White House official Neera Tanden suggesting that Piker’s own support hurt Hong in the long run. “National progs wouldve [sic] alleviated some of the ‘electability’ concerns of hong [sic] which were overstated & outright weaponized in the last week blitz.”