So...last night had some rather contentious primaries, one of which went to 2:30 AM in terms of counting and much like michigan's last week, came down to the wire when it was supposed to be close. Unlike last week though, the moderate won, and the progressive lost. Now, a lot of centrists are rubbing it in our faces, but quite frankly, I'm okay with this one. If we were gonna lose one, I would hope it would be this one. This one wasn't the one I'd wanna win. Now, I didn't formally endorse anyone on this one, and I didn't for a reason. Because I understood that the progressive running was a terrible candidate, and if she won, she'd probably blow the general. We're talking about Francesca Hong and David Crowley here.
I'm gonna be honest. While I like Hong and her policies on a personal level, she....couldn't win the general. The thing is, she ended up being one of those twitter brained SJWs who couldnt keep her mouth shut (like I'm one to talk, right?) and has a history of posting awkward screeds about proximity of whiteness and how she hated holidays like thanksgiving because native american genocide. And....that stuff comes off as unpalatable with a significant portion of the electorate. As AOC said, "Woke 1 was crazy', and she's who she was referring to. Btw, you notice Bernie and AOC didn't endorse this lady? That's why. The writing was on the wall. She was politically toxic and would have likely cost the democrats a governorship during a blue wave year. RCP had her down by 3 (the 1.7 accounts for a new poll i didn't see) and my election prediction model had her at a 23% chance of winning. Admittedly, that last D+1 poll would've improved her to 34%, but still, not looking great in a year where democrats are supposed to be dominating. Mandela Barnes, when he was in the race, was AHEAD by 3, and that would have given him a 77% chance in my model. Kind of Hong but in reverse. Id rather be on the 77% side of things than the 23%.
Still, I didn't endorse David Crowley either. While Barnes was a decent candidate in the "McMorrow progressive" lane, David Crowley is more a "Haley Stevens" centrist. And he kinda has his own cringe moments, like saying "establishment is a slur". Still, I don't like Crowley as a candidate. I dont like establishment moderates. And I dont care if hes offended by the term. Still, while I have zero polling data on Crowley, I'm guessing he would perform more similarly to barnes so in my election model, I'm going to just use Barnes' data as a placeholder until I actually get some decent data on him. Which means I'll tentatively shift the race to lean D from lean R.
Speaking of polling, wasn't Hong supposed to win in a literal landslide? How did this end up getting so close in what should've been like a Hong+18 race? Well, look at the data carefully. Hong performed about exactly where she was supposed to, it was everything else that was off. See, Mandela Barnes was the original candidate running against Hong, but he kinda crapped the bed and couldnt get the base behind him. So last minute, Barnes dropped out, and Crowley jumped in instead. And the polling never really picked up for Crowley. The other 60% of the base was deeply divided between Crowley, Barnes, and other candidates. There were LOTS of undecideds, and everyone just ended up coalescing around Crowley. Hong got around the 39% or so she was supposed to, Crowley just ended up ALSO getting around 39% and won by like 3000 votes. This is a problem with these primary polls with 3+ candidates, you can see a lot of movement between candidates between the polls and election day as the race shifts and polling just didn't account for that. The result was a normally unthinkable result suddenly becoming possible. This is why both Michigan and Wisconsin were so far off, we had 3 person races turn into 2 person races and then the polling didn't pick up how people actually were gonna vote leading to margins that were MASSIVELY off.
And again....I might not like Crowley, but uh...I also was reluctant to support Hong, for all the obvious reasons. Quite frankly I'm low key relieved Hong lost. Here's the thing. We shouldnt mourn this loss. If she won, she'd go onto the general, lose, and we'd never hear the end of it and how progressives arent electable. As smug as centrists are today, they'd be 10x worse if she choked on the general with a more moderate candidate having a 6 point electability gap here. SO yeah, let them have this one. We got a lot of wins this cycle, we dont need this one and this one would have been bad for our movement long term.
At least Flannigan won in Minnesota. I didnt pay much attention to that race, but apparently she was the more progressive candidate and people are happy about that.
Seriously though, we REALLY didn't need Hong winning here. Take the L, support crowley in the general, and we support our progressives in other races where we CAN win.
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