At this point, based on the latest Marquette poll results, it looks like a certainty that Francesca Hong will be the Democratic nominee for governor. Tony Evers’ Hail Mary in the form of David Crowley looks to be either falling to the end zone turf or being intercepted and run back the other way by Hong.
According to the results, Hong is now at 38%, up from 26% last week while undecided voters went from 45% to 34%. All of the other candidates who were in both polls stayed the same. Crowley essentially replaced Sara Rodriguez, but she was at 11% and he’s at 7%. So Evers’ support cost the leading moderate four points and Hong picked up all the undecideds who made up their minds.
In other words, it’s over. And it will be Hong versus Tom Tiffany in November.
Hong is a proud member of the Democratic Socialists, so it’s natural and fair to ask her about her (other) party’s platform, among other things. So, candidate Hong, here goes:
- The DSA calls for essentially eliminating all checks and balances at the federal level. The Senate would be eliminated altogether and the House would appoint both the president and the supreme court, so there would be no independent judiciary. Do you support that? Do you support the same thing at the state level? What if MAGA were to control the House? Would you still support this plan?
2. The platform calls for the elimination of the police and jails and “disempowering police unions.” Do you support that? What other unions would you disempower? If police and jails are just the means of white supremacy, then how do you explain support in black neighborhoods for more police presence there?
3. The platform calls for free college, forgiveness of all student debt, free child care, Medicare for all with no copays, reparations and more. How would you pay for that? If it doesn’t all happen at the federal level, will you try do it in Wisconsin? Again, how will you pay for it? If your answer is higher taxes on the rich, how much more than the current 40% of federal income taxes should the top one percent of earners pay? What effect will this have on economic growth and job creation?
4. The platform calls for a 32-hour work week with no reduction in pay or benefits. If there’s a decrease in productivity with no corresponding decrease in pay, what effect will that have on the economy?
5. The platform calls for universal rent control. Won’t that worsen the housing shortage? If you were a developer why would you build any rental housing when you don’t know what the government will allow you to charge in rent over the lifetime of your loans? Why would banks loan you the money?
6. The platform calls for the closure of all overseas U.S. military bases. If North Korea — with its brutal dictatorship (do you even agree that it’s a brutal dictatorship?) –were to attack South Korea, would you just let that happen? What about Taiwan? Would you end U.S. military aid for Ukraine? Do you then also support Donald Trump in his efforts to back out of NATO? Would you allow Vladimer Putin to invade more countries?
7. The platform accuses Israel of genocide, yet makes no reference to Hamas’ October 7th attacks or to the “from the river to the sea” assertion that is essentially about wiping Israel from the map. Do you support Israel’s right to exist? Is vowing to destroy Israel genocide? If Benjamin Netanyahu came to Wisconsin would you have him arrested?
8. A recent poll found that, among all the Democratic candidates, you have the lowest support with nonwhite voters and the highest support among those with college educations. If you’re the candidate of the marginalized, how do you explain that?
9. This summer, in your Assembly district. a career criminal with a violent history was resisting arrest when he pulled out a knife and slashed a Madison police officer. When a taser failed to stop him, an officer found it necessary to use deadly force. Within hours of the incident, and with only sketchy information, you pronounced this “an execution.” Is this the kind of judgement and temperament we can expect from you as governor?
These are some of the questions Tiffany will raise between now and November. They’re good and fair questions and ones we should all have.
And here’s another one: if the primary is over now, is it also a done deal for a Tiffany victory? Not necessarily. From my perspective, and that of most moderates, the political world has gone mad. In an era when Donald Trump can be president (twice) and Graham Platner had secured the Senate nomination in Maine before self-destructing and DSA members won primaries in New York and a few other places and now Hong can take over the Democratic Party here, anything can happen. Some significant part of the electorate just wants to blow everything up.
A crucial question for Hong is how many Democrats like me are out there. Because just as there were Never Trump Republicans in 2016, I’m now a Never Socialist Democrat. I may not vote for Tom Tiffany, but I certainly will not vote for Francesca Hong. Like the Never Trumpers, I’ll choose my country over my party every time.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
You said what needed to be said. Thanks.
Get Outlook for iOShttps://aka.ms/o0ukef ________________________________
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Interested in what your questions are for Tom Tiffany.
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The central one is: Why did you help try to steal what you knew was a free and fair election in 2020? There is no imaginable answer to that which justifies what he did. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to eliminate the Senate and an independent judiciary. So, there’s that.
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But why keep the Senate? It was an undemocratic compromise at the founding, surely we don’t need to keep it just for the sake of tradition. What’s so wrong with democracy that we need this undemocratic institution?
If a US Supreme Court that accepts bribes is your idea of an independent judiciary, I don’t think I’ll be able to change your mind.
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So, if House members accept bribes then we should abolish the House? What will we have left? Just because members of a body behave badly, that doesn’t make the institution itself worthless.
The Founders did not create a pure and direct democracy. They feared that a tyranical king would be replaced by a tyranical majority. They feared “the mob,” what today we would call populism. What they believed was that we are all born absolutely free to do whatever we want as individuals and that we create governments only as a practical matter — my absolute freedom cannot allow me to take your life or property. But every time government enacts a law or spends a tax dollar it takes away some of our freedom. Simply because there’s a majority for something doesn’t make it right and majorities enact all kinds of things that I don’t want imposed on me. I think the defense budget is too high, but I still have to pay taxes for it. There is a Wisconsin law prohibiting me from legally using marijuana. It was enacted by a majority, but I object to it. Some majorities in some states are enacting laws prohibiting transgender women from competing in women’s sports. Whether or not I agree with that, it’s not the kind of thing we should be making laws about. But a majority supports that so it happens anyway.I could go on. DSA seems to think that if we had unfiltered democracy all we’d get are liberal laws and their agenda. I don’t think so.
That’s the broad philosophical underpinning for the speed bumps to direct democracy, such as the Electoral College, the Supreme Court and the Senate (and the filibuster, which came later). It SHOULD be hard to make a law. That’s the way the system is set up. And do you really want a system without those speed bumps? What if MAGA controls the new all-powerful House?
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Your writing suggests that you’re more anti-Hong than you are pro-anybody else. She said this week that she’s not in line with everything on the DSA national “platform.” Has Tiffany disavowed a single item in Donald Trump’s agenda? Tariffs? Iran? Militarized ICE raids on neighborhoods and the apprehension and deportation of immigrants who are here “the right way”? Collecting billions off sales of a meme coin? Strong arming bribes out of media corporations to approve their deals? Timing a massive rollback of Medicare for right after the 2026 elections? He’s on board with all of that and I don’t think any of it polls well. Like sub-40% approval.
He’s not exactly an innovative thinker. Whatever Trump tells him to do, he does. Will moderates ever get around to holding him accountable for that?
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I’m strongly anti-Trump and have expressed that repeatedly I have made no arguments in favor of Tiffany. So, you’re punching at a paper tiger here. If Hong doesn’t agree with everything on the DSA agenda, well then it’s her responsibility to say specifically what those items of disagreement are.
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We get a lot of laws that lots of people disagree with now, and we’d get a lot of laws that lots of people disagree with under a real democracy. I’ll stake my lot with democracy, and yes, even if a bunch of people I disagree with are the majority. Our collective path should be towards increasing democracy, worldwide. We would still have a constitution to ensure that a simple majority doesn’t take away fundamental rights. Scaremongering about the tyranny of the majority doesn’t acknowledge that we’re already living under the tyranny of the minority. Our founders were wrong about some things, and had to compromise on others, they aren’t gods and we’re supposed to improve upon this imperfect union. The best improvements we’ve had are intertwined with expanding democratic power.
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We do have some guidance regarding #3:
According to this piece, she’d raise the income rate on the highest tax bracket from 7.65 to 8.65, which I must say sounds pretty reasonable.
Also worth noting from the article:
“A bill Hong coauthored in the Assembly this year but did not mention during the debate would raise that rate to 8.85 percent in subsequent years and create an additional tax bracket of up to 17.7 percent for million dollar incomes.”
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Fair enough, but with a $2 billion surplus the question I have is why we need higher taxes at all. The state doesn’t have taxes that are too low; we have spending that is too high.
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I imagine you wrote this whole post rhetorically, but given your status as a former mayor it may be worth actually sending these questions to her campaign to see if they’d yield a response. From what I’ve heard her campaign seems like they try to respond to lots of folks and questions that come there way.
Heck, my neighbor down the street invited her to a backyard party he was hosting back in June on a whim, without knowing her personally, and she actually showed up.
To be clear, I’m still not supporting her in the primary, but never hurts to ask for more info.
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Barnes DROPS OUT
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Dave,
You didn’t ask “You have $56k in outstanding loans for your kind-of quasi restaurants that never did much besides churn paper. When were you planning to pay them back? One’s 12 years outstanding.”
Dave. Everyone knows Hong and her associates are part of NGO laundering conduits. You know how that works as well as anyone. “State and county business loans” lent to stuff that never happened. Okay. That’s a nice house your paper business is located in.
See you soon Dave. Love, your party.
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I’m not clear on the second part of your comment. How would I know anything about “NGO laundering conduits?”
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“the top 1% of earners already pays 40% of federal income taxes.” Limiting the analysis to “income taxes” is a trick. I never knew this until recently: if we look at the entire pool of taxes paid, rather than just the federal income tax, it turns out our tax system is relatively flat. The progressive nature of the income tax is balanced out by the regressive nature of other taxes.
Moderate Never-Socialists should consider if the policies of Hong or Tiffany will be better for the future of moderate political organizing. Because one DSA platform position our host conspicuously skipped is electoral reform. Hong would work to improve upon our 2 party system, opening up opportunities for moderates (and all viewpoints) to organize and get their vision in front of voters without D or R party backing. Voting R will never lead to a system where moderate views have a chance. This issue should overshadow every other issue for political moderates, if they think strategically rather than emotionally.
Most of what DSA proposes won’t get past the existing checks and balances unless more of the public starts agreeing. No big deal, that’s democracy, only the popular parts of the platform will get implemented, and they’ll be watered down by inevitable compromises. But electoral reform is popular and, if championed by a governor, could reasonably make progress under Hong and create tangible improvements to our State democracy asap. And, if moderates really are the silent majority, we’ll be safe from a lurch to the left once electoral reform is implemented.
A moderate refusing to vote for a DSA candidate is making the same mistake DSA members make when they refuse to vote for a moderate. Sorry moderates, you were likely out-organized this time. Learn a lesson for a change – get out there and knock on doors, get people engaged, sell your vision. But first, vote Hong so that your organizing can pay off.
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I actually did include some items in the “Working Class Democracy” section of the DSA platform. That’s the section that includes abolishing the Senate and eliminating checks and balances altogether. Other parts of it are so vague as to be meaningless. They want to “end corruption.” So do I. And…? There are other ideas I oppose. I think that you should have to be a citizen to vote, for example. Then there are things that are probably fine, but not particularly impactful, like ranked choice voting. And there are a few things that I support, like “ending dark money,” but there is an argument to be made (and the Supreme Court agrees) that dark money is a form of free speech protected by the Constitution. In any event, the role of money in politics is probably overrated. I think, as do they, that we should have more options for parties. But that’s an odd argument for them to make, as they are not acting as their own third party, but rather trying to take over one of the existing ones. So, yes, there are a few ideas in there that i agree with, but those aren’t exclusive to the DSA while their main original ideas (eliminating checks and balances) are, in my view, horrible. That’s why I can’t vote for a DSA candidate. They aren’t just more liberal than I am. They are a fundamentally different party with different and radical goals, which I strongly oppose.
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Ranked choice voting is the most important implementable change we can make to allow for more diverse views and move past the 2 party system. That, perhaps with campaign finance reforms, is the only plausible way a moderate party has a chance. And I disagree, this idea is rather exclusive to the DSA – Ds and Rs aren’t running on this. It’s mainly been implemented thus far through extraordinary popular demand, dragging Ds and Rs into it against their will.
You bemoan the current incentives against moderation, yet dismiss this policy. I’ve read your ideas on this topic, and contend they are not nearly as doable or useful towards your goal of moderate political power compared to RCV.
I’m sure you’ll point to the existing examples and pick out instances where an immoderate candidate prevailed. That’s not the fault of ranked choice voting, that’s the fault of moderate candidates who don’t understand that they need campaign and sell their vision – they can’t just ride along with the party.
The only reason the DSA had to work within the Democratic Party is the same as why T took over the Republican Party – there’s not currently any other path! (There are differences, but I’m being brief). Believe me, DSA would rather let Democrats alone to be a corporate moderate party and not have to operate within it, and instead list a D as #2 on the RSV ballot.
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Underneath Hong’s view of criminal justice, arrests are just kind of random and nobody ever really knows why they get arrested and it can just happen out of nowhere, to anybody, for any reason. Healthy and well adjusted people know that’s simply not true.
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I’d be interested for you to clarify your view – what do you mean by “that” in your last statement?
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