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Notes -
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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