What can we learn from Francesca Hong’s loss in Wisconsin? | Ben Davis

A fairly overtly radical socialist winning about 40% of the vote in a primary like this was unthinkable even a few years ago

T he left’s insurgency against the Democratic party establishment has hit its first serious bump in the road in Wisconsin. Democratic socialist Francesca Hong entered Tuesday up by big margins in the polls, the huge betting favorite. She left it just a few thousand votes short of the Democratic nomination. What happened, and how, offers extremely important lessons for both the left and the Democratic establishment.

The first is that the party still matters. Its institutions and leaders matter. We saw that power in Democratic primaries in 2020. After Bernie Sanders won the Nevada caucuses and emerged as the frontrunner, party leaders rapidly consolidated around Joe Biden.

Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out and endorsed him, and within days Biden went from trailing badly to winning majorities of the Democratic vote across much of the country. It was a stunning demonstration of the power of the party, its institutions and its elites to signal to voters who the party’s candidate was and rapidly consolidate support around him. The same basic thing happened here.

For all the talk of the party’s discredited and elderly establishment, the party can still move enormous numbers of voters. Sure, it has lost some legitimacy in the eyes of Democratic voters. But a majority of Democrats in most places still like the Democratic party and trust many of its leaders.

This is how, in the span of a month, David Crowley went from licking his wounds after dropping out of the race to being the Democratic nominee for governor of Wisconsin. Governor Tony Evers and other party leaders were able to send a strong signal to voters who trust them and the institutions they represent that Crowley was the party’s candidate and the best vehicle for continuing Democratic governance in the state.

Years of organizing and ground game, and even a well-developed socialist base, were enough to bring Hong within a few thousand votes of winning statewide.

But they were not enough by themselves to withstand a rapid consolidation among Democratic voters outside the left’s organized base. The Democratic party establishment is not as hollow and desiccated as it sometimes may appear. It is still one of the strongest political forces in the country.

Second, the left needs to address the problem of scale. It has built powerful political machines in many urban quarters, built on door-knocking and tight social connections. But that is not enough to win at a statewide scale. This form of organizing has built a deep base for the left, but still a narrow one. To win across an entire state, especially a swing state, the left needs to learn statewide mass communication.

Many on the left scoff at TV ads and other traditional political strategies they view as padding the pockets of consultants and forgoing the base-building, on-the-ground, roll-up-your-sleeves hard work that builds political organization.