Our Best Stuff on the State of the Left
The Dispatch · RC · trust 37/100
Unlocked Dispatch Weekly Our Best Stuff on the State of the Left Mainstream Democrats said no to a democratic socialist in Wisconsin. Rachael Larimore / August 15, 2026 Loading Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong speaks to reporters after voting in the primary election on August 11, 2026 in Madison, Wisconsin. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong speaks to reporters after voting in the primary election on August 11, 2026 in Madison, Wisconsin. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) = 3 && ageInMonths 3 months old . Some information may be outdated.'; } else if (ageInMonths = 6 && ageInMonths 6 months old . Some information may be outdated.'; } else if (ageInMonths = 12 && ageInMonths 1 year old . Some information may be outdated.'; } else if (ageInMonths = 12) { const ageInYears = Math.floor(ageInMonths / 12); this.message = `This post is more than ${ageInYears} ${ageInYears === 1 ? 'year' : 'years'} old . Some information may be outdated.`; } } }" { this.tooltipOpen = false; }, 200); } }" class="relative" Audio Turn any article into a podcast. Upgrade now to start listening.
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Hello and happy Saturday. Welcome to the dog days of summer: Congress is on recess, sports fans are itching for the start of football season, and parents are maybe not entirely sad that the school year is about to start. With the relative lull in the news, many eyes were on the Midwest on Tuesday, and not just because of the major thunderstorms that rolled through and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of people (including the Ohio bureau!). The real attention was on Wisconsin, where democratic socialist Francesca Hong lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley despite a double-digit lead in polling.
The divisions between the progressive/socialist camp and the mainstream/establishment have been on full display throughout the primaries, from the Maine Senate debacle with Graham Platner to a handful of democratic socialists winning congressional primaries in New York, to the emergence of uber-progressive candidates in the Midwest. A week ago, I wrote about Abdul El-Sayed winning the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Michigan over four-term U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, a moderate. The Michigan Senate and Wisconsin governor primaries are interesting to compare and contrast—both races were close, but Michigan voters elevated a far-left candidate who is trailing in the first general-election poll conducted after the primary, whereas Wisconsinites made a safer choice for November.
It seems like at least some progressives are aware that their more extreme views aren’t popular with the broader population. U.S. Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who identifies as a democratic socialist but declined to endorse Hong, tried to laugh off some of the progressive culture war stances that drove working-class voters to the GOP in 2024, telling an interviewer, “I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy.’”
In Boiling Frogs , Nick Catoggio noticed a couple of funny things about that phrasing. First off, doesn’t “Woke 1” imply that “Woke 2” is coming? “If the original was crazy by their own admission, why are progressives planning a sequel?” he asked. And, looking at the agenda that some progressives and socialists are pushing—Medicare for All, ending deportations, defunding the Pentagon—he suspects it will be worse:
It will be crazy, for the same reason Woke 1 was crazy and the same reason right-wing postliberalism is crazy crazy crazy. They’re all expressions of populism, and populism is almost unfailingly paranoid, demagogic, mobbish, and stupidly reductionist in how it tries to solve problems. As one of my editors said this morning, whatever you think of Woke 1 bugaboos like Drag Queen Story Hour, they surely did less damage to America than having actual Marxists in Congress setting policy will.
In a very philosophical G-File , Jonah Goldbeg wrote that he doesn’t entirely trust AOC’s newfound pragmatism, but he noted that the Democrats aren’t the only ones plagued by extremist nonsense.
It’s fine—nay, necessary—to mock the “defund the police” nonsense of Woke 1 (which I did, often). It’s absolutely correct to reject a chuckle and shrug as a sufficient mea culpa for your own participation in a puritanical, hysterical jihad against reason and sound argument. If I can’t trust a leader to be sane in crazy times, I can’t trust you at all. It’s easy to be sane when it’s in your political self-interest.
But an enormous number of leaders on the right have failed the exact same test. Focusing on Woke 1 doesn’t absolve the fanatics and hysterics of the right nor the people who surrendered to the fanaticism and hysteria of the Trump era—and continue to this day as enablers and peddlers of it.
One other issue that has emerged is that pollsters are having a hard time reading the divisions among Democrats. In Michigan, Stevens led El-Sayed going into the primary but he eked out a 1-point victory, whereas in Wisconsin, Hong led by double digits before losing by a half-point. John McCormack spoke to some pollsters, who explained the challenge:
Chaz Nuttycombe, executive director of State Navigate, told The Dispatch in an interview that nonresponse bias was a problem in State Navigate’s surveys—Hong supporters were just more willing to respond to a poll. “In order for us to have a very accurate poll in these states, something that we need to know is what percentage are democratic socialists or moderate,” Nuttycombe told The Dispatch . “And we don’t know.” While pollsters can weight their polling sample by demographic characteristics like race and education, it’s much more difficult—if not impossible—to weight for ideology.
On that note, thank…
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