Francesca Hong’s narrow loss in Tuesday’s Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor has been billed as a setback for progressives following a string of high-profile wins. A “stunning loss,” the New York Times proclaimed on Wednesday. POLITICO declared the democratic socialist’s defeat by David Crowley, a mainstream Democrat and the Milwaukee County executive, “is undercutting the narrative of an emerging insurgency.” Both publications agreed the result exposed “the limits of the left” and its power.

In fact, what the race revealed were the weaknesses and limitations of an ineffective candidate who would have almost certainly flamed out in the general election. Democrats across the political spectrum, and especially progressives, should all be breathing a sigh of relief at her defeat.

Hong had a compelling story. The child of South Korean immigrants, she has confronted the high cost of college — she was once forced to drop out to find work — and has experienced financial hardship. As a single mother and service-industry worker, Hong carries relatable and valuable lived experience that is often missing from the halls of state and federal government.

The problem was that the 37-year-old assemblywoman couldn’t quite manage to assemble a compelling narrative from all those memorable, resonant elements. At nearly every turn, she allowed herself to be defined: as a well intentioned candidate with some wacky views (“Abolish the Senate,” anyone?); as a provocateur who, to quote one Wisconsin voter, was “sort of inviting some controversies”; as being, in the words of the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s Democratic chair, “willing to sell out the Jews of Wisconsin for a few bucks”; as the contender most likely to prevail in a primary that sometimes seemed like a Marx Brothers comedy, with candidates dropping out of (and, in the case of Crowley, reentering) the race according to shifting fortunes.

Hong was never fully in control of her own narrative. By the end, and by her own hand, she was reduced to being a joyless hater of holidays and an avowed enemy of All Things Fun.

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Her interviews didn’t help. While Hong described herself as a “hustler” in a July interview with MS NOW’s Antonia Hylton, the energy she gave off was anything but. She appeared out of her element, far too hesitant even in the friendly environment afforded by the liberal-oriented network, and her performance set the stage for a test she was bound to fail when it came three weeks later. In an appearance on Fox News, Hong withered under host Dana Perino’s questioning about how much her views aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America platform and her provocative social media history, which included calls to “[d]efund then abolish” the police.

Worse were Hong’s attempts to confront her apparent antipathy toward holidays including Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Fourth of July and even Halloween that appeared on her unscrubbed X account. Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about her Nov. 16, 2020, call to “cancel Thanksgiving,” Hong passed up the chance to disavow the tweet and instead talked about how she cooked a Thanksgiving meal at 16. Two days later, she told POLITICO’s Irie Sentner that it was her “favorite holiday” while admitting, “I’m kind of a curmudgeon when it comes to holidays in general.”

Hong might as well have changed her campaign slogan to I HATE FUN. It’s a tale as old as Dickens: No one likes a Scrooge.

A more adept progressive, such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, would have easily batted away the questions. Ocasio-Cortez, in fact, did just that during an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week” two days before the primary. When host Jonathan Karl asked her about Hong’s social media history and past positions, Ocasio-Cortez laughed it off. 

“I have a local city councilman that has this saying that ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” she said of Hong’s tweets, some of which came during the Covid-19 pandemic. “And I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.” Describing some of the ideas raised during this time as useful, Ocasio-Cortez said, “during lockdown, of course — rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.”

The congresswoman’s response demonstrated an agility and awareness that Hong clearly lacks, something that was surely a factor in Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to not endorse her fellow democratic socialist. When asked by Karl, she said she was focused on “winning back the Congress, winning back the House and positioning ourselves to have the best chance possible to win the Senate.”

But the diss was notable — and shrewd. For the left to succeed, Ocasio-Cortez knows they must move beyond functioning as scolds. Dourness rarely plays well in politics, and it’s a particularly unbecoming quality in progressives, who can sometimes come off as humorless. The most electable progressives are instead happy warriors, a quality Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have in spades.

Witness Madmani’s recent conversation with the New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro. In a telling exchange, Garcia-Navarro asked the mayor about traits that make a good politician, and then she pointed to his smile and innate optimism. He replied, “You are showing something to the world about who you are, what you’re for, how it makes you feel, and I think oftentimes it feels like politicians are blank canvasses, and everyone else is supposed to paint them in. I think it’s time to show people ‘This is whom I am. Maybe you don’t like it, maybe you do like it. But this is me.'”

Despite her efforts and compelling personal story, Francesca Hong allowed everyone else to paint her in, and had she prevailed in the primary, it would have likely doomed her in November. She was an imperfect messenger for the left, and instead of being a setback, her loss on Tuesday was a gift to progressives.

The post Francesca Hong’s loss in Wisconsin is a win for progressives appeared first on Salon.com.

Over the last few days as we’ve been discussing Francesca Hong’s campaign, Thanksgiving abolition and “defunding the police,” I’ve made the same argument a number of times — most recently with TPM Reader AB whose email dispatch you can read below. I wanted to share it with you because it informs my way of understanding these things.

After Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary last year, there were so many powerful people eager to take him down and so many ways it would be easy to do it. It’s very, very challenging to navigation the transition from a lefty/social democratic/identity politics milieu to a broader society-wide electorate. Obviously New York City is a very blue city. It’s not Wisconsin or Michigan, let alone Texas or Ohio. But the same general point remains. It’s an incredibly challenging needle to thread, one that requires immense, innate political skill. Mamdani fielded all the standard attacks, some fair, some very unfair, and again and again he was able to finesse them. This, to me, was the biggest signal. He’s an immense political talent. Some have it; most don’t; he does.

Of course I have my own issues with him on Israel/Palestine. But even on that issue, perhaps especially on that issue, I saw how he was able to navigate a super challenging electoral thicket. Again and again.

Which brings me to Francesca Hong.

Jon Cohn has a good piece in The Bulwark on the challenges ahead for Abdul El-Sayed. The “brutal path ahead,” Jon calls it. I’ll note here that Jon is based in Michigan, despite beginning his journalism career in the East Coast cities where most political journalists are based. (In other words, his report isn’t based on parachuting into the state for a few weeks.) He notes the two, equally accurate narratives coming out of this primary battle. El-Sayed built a potent and victorious movement. Sanders-style progressive Democrats seldom win these contests in purple states. El-Sayed did. And he did it in the face of concerted opposition from the state’s Democratic establishment, the national establishment and an ocean of outside money, mostly from AIPAC.

It’s also true that Republicans will now run a viciously Islamophobic campaign against him, which will get extra traction from his association with the willfully inflammatory Hasan Piker. There’s another dynamic we’ve seen across numerous establishment-progressive battles. The Platner campaign pitched itself as appealing to working class or at least culturally working class voters who are usually unreachable by Democrats. But the polling showed that the demographic profile of Platner’s supporters looked pretty similar to what most Democrats have gotten over the last couple decades, and especially since Trump — the educated and affluent. The loose outlines of El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan look similar. Both make a pitch about young voters but they tend to appeal most to educated and downwardly mobile voters — so again, another version of standard early 21st century Democratic coalition.