Every election cycle, the Democratic establishment repeats a familiar playbook: punch left, court the center, and lecture the base on the harsh mechanics of “electability.” We are instructed to fall in line, swallow our values, and “vote blue no matter who” to protect democracy. Yet, when a progressive candidate dares to run on a transformative agenda—one centered on human needs rather than donor interests—the rules of engagement shift dramatically. Suddenly, party solidarity dissolves, replaced by open hostility, corporate-funded opposition, and bad-faith character assassination.
The recent primary battle between progressive state representative Francesca Hong and establishment-backed David Crowley in Wisconsin exposes the profound dishonesty of this narrative.
Despite facing a wall of opposition from party elites, zero national endorsements, a massive funding deficit, and relentless media smears, Hong lost the nomination by roughly 3,000 votes—a microscopic margin of just 0.4 percentage points. Yet, almost immediately, corporate media outlets like Politico, CNN, and The New York Times rolled out identical, pre-fabricated headlines declaring that the “far left hits a wall” and that the progressive movement is in full retreat.
To frame a razor-thin, fraction-of-a-percent defeat as a decisive rejection of progressive values is not journalism; it is political propaganda designed to manufacture consent and protect the status quo.
Consider the sheer scale of the apparatus arrayed against Francesca Hong.
Democratic Governor Tony Evers publicly put his thumb on the scale, explicitly telling voters that an Asian American progressive socialist was “unelectable” against Republican election-denier Tom Tiffany. Meanwhile, major political action committees and donor networks poured cash into TV ads to frame Hong’s platform as dangerous and out-of-touch.
The media spent weeks hyper-fixating on bad-faith coverage of a single Thanksgiving tweet, effectively lynching her reputation while remaining silent on genuine extremism on the right—such as Donald Trump’s dehumanizing attacks on Somali immigrants or the routine Islamophobia spewed by Republican lawmakers.
Despite this coordinated campaign, Hong nearly pulled off an upset. Why? Because her platform wasn’t an abstract ideological experiment; it addressed the material realities of working-class people.
Hong campaigned on:
Freezing skyrocketing rents and protecting working families from displacement.
Instituting a moratorium on AI data centers that pollute local water supplies, strain power grids, and spike utility bills for ordinary residents.
Refusing dark money, Super PAC cash, and corporate backing.
When given a choice between an establishment politician aligned with big tech and corporate interests and a progressive fighting for lower costs and corporate accountability, voters split down the middle. Hong didn’t lose because her ideas are unpopular; she came within 3,000 votes of victory because people are exhausted by a status quo that demands their votes while offering nothing in return.
The establishment’s obsession with stifling its left wing goes beyond election strategy—it reveals a fundamental alignment of values.
When young, ambitious, integrity-driven candidates step up to organize, the party establishment works overtime to tear them down. Yet, when it comes to the right, that same establishment endlessly seeks “common ground.” They embrace figures like Liz Cheney—who voted with Donald Trump over 90% of the time—while actively ostracizing progressive voices within their own coalition.
Nowhere was this grotesque double standard clearer than in a recent public display by Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress (CAP)—a leading Democratic think tank.
In her zeal to mock and attack progressives over Hong’s narrow loss, Tanden amplified a tweet from Laura Loomer, a notorious far-right, anti-Muslim extremist. Tanden used Loomer’s Islamophobic rhetoric to dunk on digital media surrogates and progressive activists. Think about that: the president of a major Democratic institution, an organization that once published landmark research exposing the dangerous mechanics of Islamophobia, actively validated a white nationalist troll just to strike a blow against the party’s own left wing.
When establishment leaders show more comfort agreeing with far-right agitators than with democratic socialists, anti-war advocates, or working-class organizers, they signal exactly where their loyalties lie.
The political establishment wants progressive voters to feel defeated, hopeless, and isolated. They want us to believe that wanting basic healthcare, affordable housing, clean air, and an end to corporate dominance makes us “scary” or “unelectable.”
They use “electability” as a cudgel to keep us quiet. But a candidate isn’t unelectable because they challenge power; they are deemed “unelectable” by the very power structures that fear them.
Look across the country. Where progressive candidates run disciplined, community-focused campaigns—knocking on doors, organizing working people, and offering a clear alternative to corporate rule—they perform remarkably well, often overcoming massive spending deficits funded by groups like AIPAC, big tech, and real estate lobbies. Look at Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in New York, whose approval ratings and broad working-class support continue to defy establishment predictions. Look at the slate of progressive organizers winning local and state seats across the Rust Belt.
This primary result in Wisconsin was not a defeat; it was a warning shot to the establishment. A campaign run on shoe-leather organizing and zero corporate PAC money got within four-tenths of a point of the nomination.
A “no” under these conditions isn’t a permanent rejection—it is a “not yet.”
It means the groundwork has been laid, the brand recognition is established, and the appetite for real change is growing. The establishment can use corporate media to spin a 0.4% loss as a total collapse all they want, but fear is transparent. They are terrified because they know that next time, the margin will vanish entirely.
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