The Night Thanksgiving Was Saved
The Bulwark · C · trust 49/100
Dems choose defeating Trump over defeating themselves.
William Kristol , Andrew Egger , and Jim Swift August 12 Upgrade to listen 12 minutes 843 439 50 These polls suck! What’s going on with the polls! We at The Bulwark are demanding a complete and total shutdown of polling 1 until we can figure out what’s going on. Happy Wednesday .
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Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate David Crowley greets supporters at a campaign rally on August 10, 2026 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. ( Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) Keep Calm and Crowley On by William Kristol
One week ago, after Abdul El-Sayed had beaten back a late surge by his moderate opponent, Haley Stevens, to eke out a 1-point victory in Michigan’s Democratic senate primary, I wasn’t a particularly happy scribbler. But as dawn broke, and I sipped my coffee and braced myself to attack my keyboard, I recalled the words of the great poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall.
I will say that it seems to be especially the case that into your life some rain will fall if you’ve decided to cast your lot with the Democratic party.
On the other hand, I woke up this morning to good news. And so I was reminded of two other lines in the same Longfellow poem:
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining.
What caused my heart to cease repining? The remarkable come-from-behind victory by the impressive young mainstream liberal, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, over democratic socialist Francesca Hong in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary.
The race was a pretty crazy one. Crowley had actually dropped out in early July, as he was running in single digits. Then Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez left the race due to a campaign finance scandal, and Crowley reentered as a moderate alternative to Hong. A Marquette University Law School poll just three weeks ago had Hong leading the field with 38 percent of the vote with Crowley at 7 percent. But then another of the non-Hong options, former lieutenant governor and 2022 losing Senate nominee Mandela Barnes, also dropped out, after which Hong’s past comments about abolishing the police and Thanksgiving came back to haunt her, and the Democratic establishment led by Gov. Tony Evers coalesced behind Crowley. He came from way behind to win—by less than half a point.
So the 2026 Democratic primary roller coaster rolls merrily on. But I’ll stick with my judgment from a week ago: We’re likely to see a real Democratic blue wave this November, with Democrats very likely to win the House, and the odds of Democrats taking the Senate (slightly) better than 50/50. And I’ll now add that the prospects for holding important governorships in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona also look good.
Let me also mention another result from last night that isn’t likely to get the attention it deserves. In a Democratic primary in Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District, former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin easily defeated fourteen-term incumbent Rep. John Larson . This is apparently the first time in modern Connecticut history that a sitting House member has lost in a primary—and Larson has been a well-liked and respected congressman. Bronin himself said that Larson is “a good man.”
But Bronin also pointed out that Larson is 78 years old and has been in Congress for almost thirty years. As Bronin said over and over, it was time for a change.
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Bronin is a centrist Democrat with establishment-type credentials. A Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar who was an officer in the Naval Reserve, he served two terms as a successful, pragmatic mayor of Hartford, where he stabilized the city’s finances, managed the city competently, and at times took on the city employee unions.
This year, Bronin ran as an energetic and fighting centrist. He emphasized that he’d vigorously take on Donald Trump. As he said to supporters last night, “From the start, this campaign was about something very simple: that if we are going to fix this mess that we’re in, we need to build a Democratic party that’s bringing a whole new energy to this fight.” Bronin ran on kitchen-table issues like bringing down inflation—but also on abolishing ICE.
So it turns out you can be a centrist and for change. You can be a moderate and a fighter. You can be competent and combative. Not a bad model for other Democrats.
Trump is as dangerous as ever—perhaps becoming more so as he becomes more desperate. What ICE is doing is as horrifying as ever. The attacks on vulnerable groups like transgender individuals are as appalling as ever. The Trump administration will work as hard as ever over the next three months to tilt this year’s electoral playing field. The Republican party will be as dishonest and as demagogic in its attacks as ever.
What is to be done? My counsel a week ago was, Keep Calm and Carry On. I think it’s still good advice—come rain or shine.
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