by liberal japonicus
I guess the big news is from the Michiganders and Abdul El-Sayed. I like Jamelle Bouie’s encapsulation of this, which is Vote Blue No Matter Who. If anyone has a more granular view of the race, please drop it in the thread and feel free to write about anything else.
Hong’s Thanksgiving post was a garden variety Twitter hot-take. It’s not like she ever did anything to try to actualize that bit of snark.
This is part of the cultural divide that is currently dividing the Dems. The older voters really seem bothered by social media tone, where the people who grew up online see it for what it is and let it go.
By the same token, the careful and conciliatory tone of the older Democrats comes across to younger voters as a complete lack of fight, and the awkwardness of the oldsters’ online presence lands on the bad side of cringe for them – ‘out of touch,’ rather than ‘adorkable.’
Neither side should take it seriously. There’s too much real stuff that needs their attention more.
Well, she damn near won the nomination. But as to whether she could win the actual election, it looks like plenty of voters thought that statewide there wouldn’t be enough “people who grew up online” to carry her through. That kind of calculation, fortunately or unfortunately, is necessary in electoral politics, where you have to appeal to different groups of voters.
Judgement is not the same thing as cowardice. AOC appears to be successfully threading that needle at the moment,
And FWIW it seems there are likely to be serious compensations:
https://newrepublic.com/article/214244/wisconsin-governor-election-democrats-maga-weapon
I don’t see anything of substance in that TNR article. It’s all just Dem strategists trying to hype up their team on the coming politicsball season, and what the offense will look like with Crowley as quarterback.
There’s no reason why a Hong election would have to focus on the youth vote, nor one why Crowley’s strategy would not want to reach out to younger voters and aim for broader appeal.
Our political media is noisy and shallow.
What they really need is some union organizers who know how to put together a solidarity campaign.
For anyone interested in more, this from today’s NYT covers some of the same stuff.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/us/elections/david-crowley-wisconsin-governors-primary.html?unlocked_article_code=1.41A.5Twm.h9Je8k22l2NO&smid=url-share
Also, I saw this on hilzoy’s feed and found it interesting. I didn’t know who Brian Beutler was, and had never heard the expression Woke One, but it seems to cover some of the things we have been talking about:
https://www.offmessage.net/p/woke-one-aoc-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bernie-sanders-mitt-romney-donald-trump-immigration-abolish-ice-defund-the-police-george-floyd-covid-19
And that’s enough from me tonight. Honestly, once you go down the rabbit hole of something interesting….
Not sure if Woke One is a thing (if it were like an operating system, she would have said Woke 1.0, so I’m not sure what she means with Woke One), but I think Jamelle Bouie does a good job of dismantling it here
https://youtu.be/46tpqFxfomI?si=JIEklhGKSaVP7o-B
lj, did you read the Brian Beutler piece? I liked the Jamelle Bouie clip, although in his eagerness to dismantle the bogeyman David Brooks I think he seriously loses sight of the fact that it is perfectly possible to dislike and condemn woke “rightthink” (not just find it tiresome) while simultaneously thinking that the MAGA lawlessness, violence, authoritarianism and racism are infinitely worse and more dangerous, and springing from (understatement!) much less benevolent impulses.
Which is why, since so many people seem to be vulnerable to MAGA-type messaging, it is necessary for liberal and lefty politicians, who want to eliminate the conditions which made MAGA possible, not to give idiotic hostages to fortune which make their ascent to power so much less likely or even possible. Hong seems OK to me, but I’m guessing it’s partly this political immaturity that may explain why AOC, Warren and Sanders did not endorse her.