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I see that Ms. Hong lost, where even Nate over at Silver Bulletin didn't give the winner Crowley a look-in (they had it Hong vs Tiffany), so perhaps woke is slain. Or perhaps not. AOC going "ooh things sure were crazy back then, eh? Ha-ha, those were the days, but we're all grown up now" is very amusing. I've always said she was primarily a political operator and if she thinks the wind is swinging round to a different quarter, it may be worth paying attention.
But mostly I think the craziness is just being skimmed off the top, like fat off a stock, and the main "it's called just being a decent person" bludgeoning remains. Though with Professor Arday also getting critical attention, we'll have to wait and see.
Hong losing has all the calling cards of Atlanta 2020. The only update I can make (and think anyone should) is that Democratic machines are still super powerful and polished and can manipulate any election that is even kinda close. In a general, that means a Republican needs to win by more than 100k to win any statewide with a major Dem metro. In a primary, the upstart probably needs to win real Dem voters by at least 10k.
I think Polymarket and other prediction markets took a hammering on Hong, which makes me laugh also (because I don't think prediction markets are the be-all and end-all), but to be fair, all the polls up till then were showing her leading by a country mile. The margin of loss was so small, I'm sure the conspiracy theories in some quarters will start rumbling if they haven't already.
What I'm really interested to know, if we get any analysis, is why Crowley (the eventual victor) was brought back into the race. Hong was doing extremely well in the polls, but this doesn't seem to have been reflected in the internal party views? Crowley had already dropped out, then as other candidates (who had got party backing) dropped out, Crowley was called back in. Was this because the party wanted an actual Democrat, not a DSA member, as their nominee? He seems to have received the endorsement of the party, but the question remains: how were the polls so wrong, or was this a case of "give us an electable candidate and we'll pick them" for the Democrats? In which case the progressive victories of Mamdani and El-Sayed are not indicators of where the party should turn.
But yeah - "candidate who spent years making herself as unlikeable as possible loses due to mean tweets dug up from the past, well well how the turn tables" will always be funny because of Woke or SJW or PC or the name of the time digging up old tweets and calling for heads on spikes as a result.
The DSA types mostly hate the DNC types. Some, like AOC herself, are opportunistic enough for conversion by management after they get elected (and indeed she’s now basically on the center-left of the party). Others aren’t; after all, Bernie himself still annoys them after all these years. It’s not disastrous for the party if someone like Hong is elected in the long term, necessarily, but it is bad this year and it is possibly bad if the Thanksgiving stuff gets dredged up in the 2028 election even if it’s only part of a woke left montage in GOP attack ads. It’s also a gubernatorial position, which further tilts the logic for party leadership toward the maybe less galvanizing centrist because control of congress isn’t at stake.
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Is AOC actually walking back woke 1 ideas she wholeheartedly embraced?
She is saying what she needs to say as the winds shift and the tides recede. A bit like Kamala Harris, only cannier. The Coconut Queen tried tacking hard left for 2019 and left a whole slew of hostages to fortune behind her (the 'they/them' ad just had to show her actual own appearance).
AOC is more brazen in her approach but also more clever in how she positions herself. Probably it's easier for a radical to go moderate than a moderate (or what passes for it) like Harris to try and go radical.
Kamala was never a moderate trying to go radical. She was a nothing pretending to go left then pretending to go center. Her problem always was that she was a nothing.
Well, yeah. That was the problem - there was nothing there (and I think that also is Newsom's problem trying to break out of California to the national stage). But the turn hard left really was terrible, even if her fans lapped it up at the time (OMG, she schooled old white guy Biden on busing! Racism KOd! Never mind everyone with half a brain knew Biden was going to be the candidate because His Turn Now).
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