I’ve always been annoyed by the conservative characterization of the left as out of touch elitists and academics with ridiculous vocabularies alien to normal Americans and their daily conversations. I didn’t encounter these people in my real life, and maybe it was denial on my part, but I couldn’t believe there were hidden hordes of them.
Then came democratic socialist Francesca Hong, who embodies exactly that caricature of the Democratic party. I still don’t know how many of these people exist, and plan to run for office, but this has been an instructive week on the electability and authenticity fronts.
As the nominee for Wisconsin governor, Hong would have greatly increased the risk of putting Tom Tiffany – a 2020 election denier on steroids – in charge of the 2028 election in a swing state that could determine which party controls Congress and the presidency. That’s a terrifying thought, and in the end, just enough voters agreed.
But don’t get the idea I’m a raging centrist who can’t abide progressives. Yes, like many, I was relieved this week when moderate David Crowley scraped to a win over Hong that currently stands at less than 4,000 votes out of nearly 800,000 cast. But I was equally relieved when progressive Peggy Flanagan won Minnesota’s Senate primary (and when physician Abdul el-Sayed, another progressive, won the Senate primary in Michigan).
What do these candidates have in common? Let me put it this way: Charisma and experience are advantages in any race, but the crucial components for any politician are competence and authenticity – the latter defined in part by their comfort level with who they are, and explaining why they may not think the way they once did. And in all three of these races, fortunately for Democrats, the strongest candidate prevailed.
The Democratic Socialists of America did no favors for Hong or other progressive candidates this summer when the group released a platform proposing, among other things, to abolish prisons, police, and the U.S. Senate. Hong supported all three in social posts from several years ago and softened those stands in the campaign, but she did not 100% disown them. On defunding the police, for instance, she said she would not “govern by slogan” but also that a governor cannot defund the police.
She was similarly vague or equivocal at points about inflammatory old tweets criticizing Christmas, Valentine’s Day, the Fourth of July and, especially, Thanksgiving. “Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621,” Hong said in late 2020, after months of COVID lockdowns. “If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed indigenous folx and women, so be it.”
Hong has called these posts jokes, and in at least one interview said she loved Thanksgiving and did not want to cancel it. But the same day, in a separate interview with CNN, Hong said “Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities. I think there I wanted people to understand that there are multiple views. But views can evolve.”
Was that a yes, a no, or a maybe? 🤷♀️ As Wisconsin Public Radio said tactfully of the Thanksgiving furor, “How Hong addressed the post has evolved.”
More to the point, she was trying in real time to reconcile her old tweets (and perhaps her instincts) with the office she wanted and the requirements of winning, and clearly struggling. The result was a string of confusing, inconsistent interviews that showed Hong either hadn’t changed her thinking, or had in fact done so but couldn’t or wouldn’t tell voters why.
(Breaking news: He likes it, he really likes it.)
Rep. Angie Craig, the centrist who ran against Flanagan in Minnesota, was the uncomfortable one in that race. She voted for the Laken Riley Act, a GOP bill that requires federal detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of both violent and non-violent crimes, and later – after the deadly ICE crackdown in her state – said it was a mistake. “Supporting any bill that gives ICE new authority in this administration was the wrong decision. And I regret my vote,” Craig wrote in the Minnesota Star-Tribune.
Flanagan was comfortable running in the progressive lane. She talked of Medicare for all and universal child care, of ripping apart ICE and also of securing the border. She did not call herself a democratic socialist.
Nor did she “suffer from a social-media footprint denigrating Thanksgiving,” as the New York Times put it. In fact, Flanagan wished everyone a happy Thanksgiving last year with these sentiments: “Gratitude is powerful and fuels resilience. We have so much to be thankful for even amidst tremendous challenges. I hope you reflect on the blessings in your life today surrounded by your loved ones.”
The irony here is that Flanagan, a Native American, is one of the “indigenous folx” cited in Hong’s tweet. She’s “a tribal citizen of the White Earth Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.”
Shortly before the holiday, Flanagan posted this: “Trying to figure out what to bring to Thanksgiving? Take a page out of my cookbook and bring my Chicken & Wild Rice hotdish! You can pitch in here to get my recipe:”
Yes, she was fundraising off Thanksgiving. To which an X.com user called @MtkaMoose replied: “How effing pathetic.” Alternatively, you could think of it as entrepreneurial capitalism – as American as a Thanksgiving dinner.
In case you missed it:
July 28: Trump is making government worse on purpose
DONALD TRUMP HAS BEEN TRYING for months now to shrink the number of Americans who can vote. So far his efforts have been in vain, but this might be the week he succeeds.
The SAVE Act that Trump is pushing is not simply a voter ID bill. It’s part of his administration’s larger drive to make government interactions as frustrating, time-consuming, and clunky as possible—with the end goal of netting financial or political gain for Trump, his family, his friends, and his enablers.
July 13: Susan Collins is beatable
I LIVE WITH A DOOMSAYER HUSBAND who thinks of Maine Sen. Susan Collins as a political Harry Houdini—an escape artist who can slither to a win no matter who or what she’s up against. I could not disagree more.
He admits he has Eeyore syndrome, and maybe he’s just trying to gird himself for disappointment, but that doesn’t stop me from sputtering and ranting about why he’s wrong.
July 8: Trump has blazed a midterm path to victories — for Democrats
The least surprising news of the campaign season, Democratic edition, is that one winning House nominee is so young that the incumbent she defeated was already in Congress when she was born, and two nominees for governor bragged in their campaigns about how many times they’d sued Donald Trump. Oh, and a few democratic socialists won primaries in blue areas.
Seriously, the real shocker in this midterm cycle would be business as usual — no voter backlash — in the face of flamboyant ruling-class greed and corruption from Trump & Sons on down, accompanied by Supreme Court outrages and broken promises on everything from prices to war.
June 19: Trump still has a bad case of Obama envy
WHETHER BY FATE, a devious Iranian conspiracy, or a major miscalculation by Donald Trump, the U.S. surrender in his failed 112-day “excursion” is coinciding with the triumphal opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. The split-screen contrast is telling, from Iran to presidential libraries.
Dr Heather Cox Richardson in her substack Letters from an American. frequently points out that in moments of the kind of political, social, and religious morass in which we now find ourselves, all sorts of ideas about how to ‘fix things’ are likely to bubble up. This is one of the strengths of the United States, even as one of its weaknesses is that just that sort of morass is, not infrequently an integral part of a democracy.
The medium to far political right, deeply committed as it often is, to one ‘right’ answer, often finds this sort of bubbling quite uncomfortable if not downright unpatriotic. It may well be uncomfortable, even to those most involved in promoting it, but unpatriotic it is not. Indeed, it is our greatest strength.
The Framers understood this, which is why they knew that they were launching us ‘on a wing and with a prayer’ that We the People might together find just enough of the courage, the honesty, the compassion, the understanding, the tolerance, the humility, the humor, the wisdom, the hope, and the sheer common sense to rule ourselves from the bottom up with as much justice and equity as is humanly possible.
There have really been only two moments in our history when we were, at least momentarily, nearly fully united - December 7th, 1941 and September 11th, 2001. Most other times we have been engaged in all sorts of bubbling up, trying to figure out how to make the damn thing work.
Many of us, fully including the DSA are now doing just that, having come face to face for the first time in our history with a president who utterly disdains and disavows our electoral system, our Constitution, and the rule of law, and the fact that nearly half of us voted to re-elect him even knowing what he was capable of (whether or not they understood it).
So alright. Let’s have at it. We’ve never quite gotten the damn thing to work as it was intended to work. Now is a moment to see if we can get it righter than we ever have. Let;s have those ideas bubble up. We may even try a few of them.
One of the ironies of Thanksgiving is that, despite what may be argued about its colonialist origins, it is now the most open, inclusive, and welcoming of holidays. It is not based on religion or ethnicity or national origin but is simply a day to gather with loved ones and remember to be thankful. I love that everyone who wants to may celebrate, that it involves food (eating is one of my skill sets), and that we take time to be grateful when so much of the rest of the time we focus on what makes us sad or angry. For these reasons it is my favorite holiday.