Another Prominent Socialist Refuses to Endorse Francesca Hong

Bernie Sanders won't touch Francesca Hong's campaign, and now apparently he's not alone. That's worth sitting with for a second, because when the socialist movement's own patriarch decides a race isn't worth his name, it usually means he's done the math and doesn't like what he sees. Sanders gave a polite excuse about focusing on Congress, but this is the same guy who happily jumped into Maine to back Troy Jackson, who then got wiped out in the primary. So "focusing on national races" isn't really the story here.

What's actually happening is simpler. Wisconsin isn't a lab for socialist experiments, and the people running that movement know it better than anyone. Hong has built her campaign on the kind of platform that plays great in a Madison faculty lounge and terribly with the voters who actually decide statewide elections in a state Trump has now won twice. Sanders didn't get to be the last man standing in that movement by picking losing horses out of loyalty. He picks his spots.

There's something almost funny about watching the left's own bench quietly abandon its most ideologically pure candidates the moment real votes are on the line. They'll cheer the rhetoric at a rally, then vanish when it's time to put their name behind it in a governor's race that matters. Hong's supporters can spin this as Bernie being strategic. Everyone else can read it for what it is: even the socialists don't think socialism sells in Wisconsin.