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Her politics were great, but she was really offputting to a lot of people. And she had plenty of opportunities to explain herself, but she didn’t really do a very good job of it. And a lot of people lost confidence in her.
Despite the world seemingly hellbent on making me a cynic, I find encouraging that she got so close to winning, despite her being a flawed candidate because of her questionable stances in the past.
I listened to her interview on Pod Save America and she definitely could have been more forceful about making the case that she'd grown from her past stances. I still would have voted for her, if I lived there, but I'm also probably more dialed in to politics than the average voter.
Yeah, I saw that interview too. I can’t remember which guy interviewed her (Jon Favreau, I think), but he gave her a bunch of chances to really rehabilitate herself and her image, and boy oh boy did she wiff on each one.
Look, I don’t care if she likes Thanksgiving or not, I don’t think that’s going to affect how she does her job. But a lot of things she said in her past really weirded a bunch of people out who would otherwise probably have voted for her. And I think that’s what cost her the election.
Socialists need to be able to make the case they’ll defeat Republicans.
This leads directly into the next point. It should have been clear after Joe Biden’s victory over Bernie Sanders in 2020 that the ability to defeat Republicans in general elections is nonnegotiable for Democratic primary voters. In places like New York City, where the GOP runs a local mascot like Curtis Sliwa for mayor rather than an actual candidate, this is less of a concern. But in a state like Wisconsin, where voters remember the devastation wrought by eight years of Scott Walker’s austerity-crazed, viciously antiunion Republican administration, Democratic primary voters were unwilling to take a chance with someone they viewed as less likely to win the general election.
Socialist candidates need to embrace the work of making this case, and need to campaign in a way that demonstrates to voters that we take beating Republicans every bit as seriously as they do.
This is a very important point I rarely see leftists talking about.
Leftists talk about it all the time because we're forced to defend ourselves against disingenuous "electability" concerns from a political faction that lost twice to a rapist and pedophile with the mental acuity of a 6-year-old. The typical centrist Democrat is historically unelectable and yet they still feel like they're in a position to lecture progressives on electability, when it should be the other way around.
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There's a cadre of chodes out there who think that anything short of immediate overturn of the entire system is unacceptable. Overturn to what, they can't say.
Liberals can fuck off with their electability bullshit. Arguments without credibility are farts in the wind.
All candidates are not the same and candidate quality is very important, as much as policy positions. Some great DSA and DSA-aligned candidates have won their primaries, endorsed by Bernie and AOC. But in their judgement they both decided not to endorse Hong.
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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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