Growing Pains for the Democratic Socialists

By John R. Puri

Friday, August 14, 2026

 

All was sunshine and rainbows for the Democratic Party’s insurgent socialist wing about a week ago. Their man in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, won his Senate primary against an opponent as establishment as one can get — by a smaller margin than expected, but no matter. DSA-branded House candidates in metro centers had been romping incumbents throughout the summer. Graham Platner may have gone down in flames, but his popularity forced the party to choose a replacement just as radical.

 

It seemed that seizing wealth, blowing out the budget on new entitlements, dismantling “systems of power,” and — above all else — absolutely despising Israel was the wave of the future in Democratic politics. The DSA, backed by an army of disgruntled young degree-holders, could not stumble.

 

That is, until Francesca Hong opened her mouth in public.

 

It’s hard to imagine a candidate more preposterously unsuited for a high-profile campaign — let alone the job she was running for — than Hong. A land acknowledgment come to life, she thoughtlessly parroted every bizarre luxury belief under the ceiling of UW-Madison’s sociology department. National Review’s editors recounted Hong’s greatest hits:

 

It is difficult to convey just how robotically Hong publicly committed herself to her ideology over the years — the most obvious example being her recent inability to decide whether or not she still wanted to “Cancel Thanksgiving,” because settler-colonialism is still “very painful for many people in our communities.” Throughout her elected career, Hong made her views on crime well-known: “Police exist to uphold white supremacy. Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option.”

 

Every poll had Hong cruising past her establishmentarian opponents in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s governorship. The field was simply too divided, and college towns were poised to push a comical socialist over the top. With the nomination, Hong would have put what ought to be a safe victory in this environment at risk.

 

That’s when Tony Evers, the Badger State’s retiring 74-year-old governor, saved the day. He dragged a candidate who had already dropped out, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, back into the race and rallied old-school Democrats behind him. Christian Schneider has the story:

 

Hong was coasting on a socialist momentum within the Democratic Party that had birthed U.S. Senate candidates including Graham Platner in Maine and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. And in the past few weeks, Hong’s nomination seemed inevitable.

 

It was, until Evers stepped in and reversed the race in a way that may never have been seen in modern politics. In order to stop Hong and face down the socialist wing of his party, Evers convinced Crowley, who had dropped out of the race weeks before, to reenter the contest and become the “establishment” candidate. And for weeks, it looked as if the effort was going to fall short, given Hong’s huge polling lead. And yet, on Election Day, it appears that Democrats all over the state decided to side with Evers in preventing Wisconsin from becoming a national laughingstock.

 

In the end, Hong lost the race by the narrowest of margins, all but ensuring that a Democrat will move into Evers’s office next year. Score one, at last, for the party establishment over the DSA.

 

To keep the good times rolling into 2028, some democratic socialists have also felt the need to admit past mistakes that drove voters away in the first place. Charlie Cooke writes on how Bernie Sanders’s handpicked heir is all too casually trying to moderate her image:

 

Seeking to dismiss the record of one of the many kooky political candidates with whom she is now reflexively associated, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laughed aloud as if she had been told that she had a speck of mustard on her lip. “I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” she submitted. “And I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.”

 

Is it? Do we? Why? “Woke 1” was, indeed, “crazy.” But Ocasio-Cortez’s implication is that that “crazy” moment was something that happened to her and her ideological compatriots — like an earthquake or an invasion from the sea — rather than something that was contrived, dispersed, and enforced by her and her ideological compatriots. In this, Ocasio-Cortez seems confused once again by the appropriate pronouns. It wasn’t “crazy.” They were crazy. And that “they” includes her.

 

John Fund is also unconvinced by socialist candidates’ professed revelations:

 

The problem with all of these rhetorical retreats is that over at the DSA mother ship, no one is retreating from the group’s national platform. It calls for defunding the Pentagon, abolishing police and prisons, giving asylum to illegal immigrants, and getting rid of the Senate and of public ownership of corporations. . . .

 

A major question for the upcoming midterm elections will be a simple one: Who will independents and non-leftist Democrats believe — moderate Democrats who warn that the DSA is a Trojan horse for radicalism, or the DSA’s star candidates, who claim there’s nothing dangerous to see here?

 

The answer to that question may determine whether the DSA remains a one-trick pony, winning only seats in deep-blue urban enclaves, or a serious movement with actual capacity to govern. With newfound prominence comes scrutiny, and Michigan’s Senate race is shaping up to be the faction’s big test. Either a dyed-in-the-wool radical proves he can win in a swing state typically known for electing moderates, or traditional Democrats get to tell the naïve insurgents, “We told you so.”

 

The former outcome would seed new dangers. If El-Sayed wins over the Rust Belt on a tide of anti-Trump backlash, the congresswoman from New York may think she can do the same in two short years.