{"id":5715,"date":"2026-09-04T14:49:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T14:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=5715"},"modified":"2026-09-04T14:49:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T14:49:34","slug":"democratic-socialism-a-limited-appeal-to-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=5715","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Socialism: A Limited Appeal to Voters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The defeat of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Francesca Hong in Wisconsin\u2019s Democratic primary arrives as good news for the vast majority of Americans who are not among the DSA\u2019s 120,000 members.<\/p>

Read more The price of enough<\/a><\/p>\n

It was, however, a very close race. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who was endorsed by Gov. Tony Evers (a fellow Democrat), received 39.8 percent of the vote, to Hong\u2019s 39.3 percent.<\/p>\n

Hong was a weak candidate and a poor standard-bearer for the DSA agenda, possessing none of the charisma and political talent of DSA superstar New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.<\/p>\n

Hong\u2019s charisma shortage limited her appeal to voters and led to the refusal of prominent DSA favorites Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to endorse her. The missing endorsements were probably dispositive in such a close race.<\/p>\n

I think Hong\u2019s failure to get past the post in the Democrat primary illustrates a greater problem for the collectivist \u201cdemocratic socialist\u201d movement.<\/p>\n

The democratic socialist approach relies on one central idea: tearing down all the nation\u2019s existing institutions and replacing them with a system that eliminates inequality by redistributing wealth and status to those who have allegedly been unfairly denied these things.<\/p>\n

The movement necessarily relies on coercion, which it justifies through the fomenting of grievances against anyone who can be characterized as having done well for themselves under what the democratic socialists characterize as a fundamentally corrupt society built on racism, sexism, classism, imperialism, and other cruel isms that toxically masculine Euro-trash imposed on stolen land originally occupied by noble, ecologically conscious people of peace and universal benevolence who were cruelly eliminated by massacres, deliberately infected smallpox blankets, and truly awful real estate swindles.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/figure>\nArmed with the premise that freedom is the root cause of people\u2019s suffering today and always, and intent on imposing universal equality (except for themselves, the pigs who are always more equal than others), the democratic socialists\u2019 progressive predecessors (whom the media laughably call moderates) imposed collectivist remedies that inevitably backfired, making conditions steadily worse for decades.<\/p>\n

High crime rates, mass homelessness, unaffordable housing, single-parent households, education decline, increasing economic inequality, and the like have all been caused by government policies ostensibly intended to help the needy. The proponents of these disastrous measures then use the increasingly dire resulting conditions to call for more power for themselves to solve the problems they created.<\/p>\n

To deflect attention from their own culpability for these evils, the politicians and the media place the blame on people not on their team, such as \u201cthe wealthy.\u201d They isolate and demonize these alleged enemies of all that is good and right, to delegitimize their unpleasant, embarrassing questions about causes and effects.<\/p>\n

That is how leftist politicians thrive even though their proposed solutions make things much worse. The greater the decline in economic and social conditions, the more blame and hatred they can heap on the out groups.<\/p>\n

There is, however, an obvious problem with this type of scapegoating. If the out groups you are demonizing are too big, you won\u2019t be able to gain a political majority, even with the help of a lot of cheating.<\/p>

Read more Learn about dictators from someone who suffered under one<\/a><\/p>\n

Clearly, that is the real reason the DSA bigwigs refused to support Hong\u2019s candidacy. In addition to calling for eliminating all police and prisons and claiming that \u201cPolice exist to uphold white supremacy,\u201d Hong has a long history of Twitter\/X statements targeting white people and \u201cwhiteness,\u201d especially \u201cold white dudes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most notoriously, Hong wrote in 2019 of leaving a beloved Wisconsin fast-food restaurant because she was \u201con the verge of a [sic] anxiety attack\u201d due to the presence of \u201cto [sic] many old white people who didn\u2019t think we spoke English.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four out of five people living in Wisconsin are white.\u00a0The median age in the state is 40, above the national average, and 18.5 percent of Wisconsinites are 65 or older. Sixty-one percent\u00a0self-identify as Christians. Donald Trump won the state\u2019s presidential race with 49.6 percent of the vote in 2024. Just under half of Wisconsin\u2019s population is male, of course.<\/p>\n

That is a lot of people to eliminate from your potential election coalition.<\/p>\n

Hong\u2019s defeat thus indicates a fundamental weakness of the DSA\u2019s strategy and of collectivism in general. The necessary demonization of opponents eliminates ever-greater numbers of potential supporters. The party\u2019s tent shrinks steadily as the list of scapegoated out-groups lengthens.<\/p>\n

This can work in places such as New York City and Chicago, at least for a while, as there are enough self-described victims (many of them very wealthy) to create majorities. In less-cosmopolitan locales like Wisconsin, aspiring autocrats must be much more careful about which voting groups they are willing to put publicly on the chopping block.<\/p>\n

If DSA-affiliated candidates in those places speak too openly about their obsessions, their excessive zeal and candor could reduce the movement\u2019s appeal significantly below\u00a0its outlier status.<\/p>\n

It seems undeniable that the DSA and its political sympathizers agree with Hong on the issues. Where they evidently differ deeply is on the political viability of their agenda when its innate hostility to the great majority of Americans is honestly presented.<\/p>\n

Clearly, leaders on the left believe concealment of the movement\u2019s real foundations and extensive hatreds is far more important than the very small policy distance between Hong and Crowley.<\/p>\n

Similarly, suppression of the truth about democratic socialism is the obvious reason behind Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s recent\u00a0attempt to pretend she now believes\u00a0\u201cWoke One was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all part of a strategy of hiding the full extent of the democratic socialists\u2019 enemies list, not any change of policy, ideology, or the targets of their ire.<\/p>\n

S. T. Karnick\u00a0is a senior fellow at The Heartland Institute and author of the\u00a0<\/em>Life, Liberty, Property\u00a0weekly e-newsletter<\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>

Read more Ukrainians offer Russian fighters a \u2018get out of war\u2019 free card<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: David Shankbone<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The defeat of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Francesca Hong in Wisconsin\u2019s Democratic primary arrives as good news for the vast majority of Americans who are not among the DSA\u2019s 120,000 members. Read more The price of enough It was, however, a very close race. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who was endorsed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1764,2],"tags":[2244],"class_list":["post-5715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dsa","category-politics","tag-related-topics-dsa-socialism"],"yoast_head":"\nDemocratic Socialism: A Limited Appeal to Voters - Interstate Logistics Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=5715\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Democratic Socialism: A Limited Appeal to Voters - Interstate Logistics Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The defeat of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Francesca Hong in Wisconsin\u2019s Democratic primary arrives as good news for the vast majority of Americans who are not among the DSA\u2019s 120,000 members. 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