A messy lesson for the post-woke left

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. Wisconsin won’t be the very first state to get a socialist governor, after all. In Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary, Democrats there narrowly selected David Crowley, a moderate county executive, over the democratic socialist and reformed Thanksgiving-hater Francesca Hong. This contest was widely seen as a test of the progressive movement’s strength beyond deep-blue cities…and a bit of a mess. Two candidates dropped out amid scandal just weeks before the election. Crowley himself suspended his campaign and endorsed another candidate, only to reenter the race with less than a month left. That teed up a chaotic, last-minute showdown between establishment Democrats and the party’s upstart left-wing contingent. That contingent was expected to win in Wisconsin, where Hong campaigned on practical issues like universal childcare, free school meals, and opposition to new data centers. But she also struggled to explain controversial positions that she staked out at the height of the pandemic — positions that both pro-Crowley groups and Republicans pilloried in well-funded attack ads. The furor certainly riled up Wisconsin Democrats: They turned out in huge numbers on Tuesday. And while Hong performed well in Madison and other liberal strongholds, voters in both Milwaukee and most rural counties went for Crowley. Go a little deeper [Media: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/0MiY5/2/] The Wisconsin primary was weird and messy, so I wouldn’t generalize its results too much. But there’s little doubt that Hong suffered from her association with “Woke 1” — a strain of early-2020s social justice activism that many on the left now want to disavow. You’d probably recognize Woke 1, even if you haven’t heard the term. More than a movement or a policy agenda, it was a strident, binary way of talking about race, class, and social justice that peaked after the racial reckoning of 2020…and that ultimately alienated many centrist and working-class voters, including some in minority communities. “Defunding the police” = classic Woke 1. So are calls to abolish police or prisons — or, as Hong proposed in one infamous 2020 tweet, to cancel Thanksgiving. Many Democratic voters agreed with the impulses behind these slogans — police and prisons need reform; colonialism bad — but felt alienated by the rhetoric around them. And even in Woke 1’s heyday, issues like immigration and racial justice mattered less to most Americans than things like healthcare and inflation. As left-wing candidates attempt to build new and broader coalitions, many seem to have gotten that message. Politicians like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed have both walked back comments about defunding the police, for instance. Instead, they’ve centered issues like affordability and healthcare and begun openly discussing how their positions changed. “There was a huge opening of the Overton window” during the pandemic, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday. “Rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.” One link for later ➨ Spend more intentionally. Frugality was all the rage in the wake of the Great Recession, when a generation of popular, thrift-focused bloggers taught Americans to do more with less. Pop culture has since turned on frugality, as a value — in part because people feel so pessimistic about their long-term economic prospects — but it’s still worth mining the old-school frugalsphere for relevant lessons. Before you go… * Did you know…that since 1980, the number of fires in the US has fallen by more than half? Thank more effective smoke alarms, automatic sprinklers, and fire-resistant furniture and finishes. * Today’s trivia: Which German philosopher wrote Critique of Practical Reason? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.) * Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you for the country whose capital is Vientiane. That would be Laos, which — together with China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam — has one of the world’s only one-party communist governments.