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Has the Left Really Met Its Limit? 

David Sirota on Francesca Hong’s defeat, what it means for the insurgent left, and how the American presidency has consolidated king-like power.

The stunning momentum of the insurgent left hit a roadblock this week when democratic socialist Francesca Hong narrowly lost her primary race for Wisconsin governor to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, a moderate who garnered significant support from establishment Democrats.  

“The collective power of that Democratic establishment in a state, where there is a Democratic governor and there is a real Democratic Party establishment machine, all of that power was required to eke out a 0.4 percent victory in the party’s own primary against a previously unknown candidate running as a Democratic socialist,” The Lever’s David Sirota tells The Intercept Briefing. 

This week on the podcast, host Jessica Washington speaks with Sirota, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, about the primaries and how the left is building power within the Democratic Party. 

There were bright spots for progressives on Tuesday night. In Minnesota, progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan defeated AIPAC-backed Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., in the Senate primary race. Craig had previously voted for the Laken Riley Act, which requires the federal government to detain people for certain crimes, including shoplifting and burglary. Flanagan, by contrast, told supporters on election night: “We need to rip ICE apart and stop them from terrorizing our communities.”  

“What you’re seeing now is, and I don’t want to call it a Democratic Tea Party, but it is certainly organizing and pressuring to take back power in an adversarial way from a set of forces to the left of the Democratic establishment,” says Sirota. “That is what’s new, and that is what’s driving the political dynamic now.” 

Washington and Sirota also discuss the intensifying democracy crisis unfolding in the United States. According to Sirota, it “stands on two pillars: concentrated executive power and the supremacy of money.”

Sirota explores this theme and more, in the new season of his show, Master Plan: The Kingmakers. The podcast is all about how a once-fringe legal theory moved into the mainstream and transformed the power of the American presidency. 

For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept. 

On Tuesday night, democratic socialist Francesca Hong narrowly lost her primary race for Wisconsin Governor to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.

Hong lost by less than a percentage point. But her defeat was a blow to the anti-data center movement, which she had championed throughout her campaign, even as her detractors tried to make the race about her opinions on Thanksgiving and other major holidays. 

Francesca Hong’s Loss in Wisconsin is a Win for AI Data Centers — for Now

But the night was not a total loss for progressives. In Minnesota, Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan defeated AIPAC-backed Congresswoman Angie Craig for Senate. 

Peggy Flanagan: And now let’s talk about Donald Trump’s out of control ICE force [crowd boos]. We need to rip ICE apart and stop them from terrorizing our communities. 

JW: Last year, Craig voted in favor of the Laken Riley Act, which requires the federal government to detain people for a host of crimes, including nonviolent ones like shoplifting, and it allows states to sue over immigration enforcement, giving power to state attorneys general to shape immigration enforcement policy regardless of which party holds the White House. That vote appears to have cost her in a state that largely rose up in defiance of the Trump administration’s brutal immigration crackdown, after federal immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens. 

For more of our reporting on the primaries and the anti-data center movement, visit TheIntercept.com.  

This week on The Intercept Briefing, I speak to David Sirota, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, about the primaries and how the left is building power within the Democratic Party. 

David also talks about the parallels between how the left and the right have consolidated power, and we get into the second season of his amazing series Master Plan, resuming this week. 

This new season is called The Kingmakers and is all about how a once-fringe legal theory moved into the mainstream and transformed the power of the American presidency. 

It traces the people and institutions behind that campaign — from Richard Nixon’s downfall and Dick Cheney’s post-9/11 power grab to pivotal Supreme Court decisions and Project 2025.

David, welcome back to The Intercept Briefing.

David Sirota: Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

JW: So Tuesday night, Francesca Hong narrowly lost her primary race for Wisconsin governor to the more moderate candidate, David Crowley. But it wasn’t a total loss for the left. In Minnesota, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan defeated AIPAC-backed Angie Craig. Hong’s race was plagued by, honestly, the dumbest issues, like whether she supports Thanksgiving or how she views her “proximity to whiteness.”

David, what did you make of Tuesday night’s results? Does this, as The New York Times called it, show the “limits of the left,” or is something else at play here?

DS: I think this is a good test of the power dynamic in American politics right now, specifically inside the Democratic Party. I’m going to state a few empirical facts about what happened. People can use these facts to try to confirm their priors. But here are the facts that we know. Fact one is that the entire establishment of the Democratic Party came together towards the end of this race, really consolidated to try to shut down Francesca Hong’s campaign and defeat her.

“All of the power of the old Democratic machine was required to eke out the narrowest of victories against the longest of long-shot candidates.”

“All of the power of the old Democratic machine was required to eke out the narrowest of victories against the longest of long-shot candidates.”

The collective power of that Democratic establishment in a state, where there is a Democratic governor and there is a real Democratic Party establishment machine, all of that power was required to eke out a 0.4 percent victory in the party’s own primary against a previously unknown candidate running as a Democratic socialist who was wildly under-resourced, did not air any television advertisements through her own campaign. So the point being that all of the power of the old Democratic machine was required to eke out the narrowest of victories against the longest of long-shot candidates. 

A candidate who, by the way, had been effectively abandoned by other national left-of-center icons and politicians, democratic socialists. Bernie Sanders did not endorse Francesca Hong. AOC did not endorse Francesca Hong. The candidates who have been winning as democratic socialists did not come to Wisconsin to campaign with Francesca Hong. We can discuss why that is and the mistakes or stumbles that Hong made as a candidate. But the point is that the machine with all of the power and advantages it had against a candidate with no advantages at all, that ran to say the least, an imperfect campaign, still needed all of its power to barely win a race in Wisconsin. 

So to me, what that says is that the Democratic establishment that has gotten very used to being able to easily control primary outcomes is now having to marshal all of its collective power and have everything break right for it in order to eke out these primary wins. That, I think, is a fundamental difference of the political topography of the Democratic Party.

JW: I’m thinking about the fact that we didn’t see Bernie Sanders supporting her. Obviously, AOC had come out and said that it was because she wanted to focus on Congress. So we can have that conversation.

But we also didn’t see that support for Cori Bush either. And she lost.

Wesley Bell Again Defeats Cori Bush — With Plenty of Help From AIPAC

Do you think that progressives are making a smart play here by trying to decide who’s more electable in a general election? Or, is that just more of the same silly stuff we’ve seen from the Democratic Party in terms of electability and making those decisions before voters do?

DS: Yeah, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. My take on so-called electability is that nobody really knows who is electable or not electable. I’m old enough to remember when the same media machine and Democratic Party apparatus insisted with certainty that Barack Obama could never possibly win a general election. I remember when that same machine laughed at the idea that Donald Trump could be elected........

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