Is Wisconsin A Warning for Democratic Socialists?

I talked to a woman who was a former state party official herself, part of the establishment,

and she was so ticked off at Evers for endorsing Crowley and saying that Hong likely couldn't

win in the general election.

She asked, is he trying to sabotage us?

I'm Jane Kostin and this is What Today, the show that can't for once say and I mean this.

I totally agree with Secretary of State Marko Rubio.

Here he is with his wife, Jeanette, on Katie Miller's podcast.

I tried this thing called Keto, I mean you've heard of this.

And you just eat all this protein.

So you go through this massive withdrawal from sugar and carbohydrates for the first 72 hours.

It was a near psychotic event.

I did this in this job.

I mean, Mr. President, we must bomb, you know, Paraguay.

And it's like, why?

I don't know.

I'm just really mad I haven't had any sugar.

Look, I also tried going Keto once and weirdly it also made me contemplate bombing Paraguay.

On Today's show, we talk about the Democratic divide at play in Tuesday's Wild Wisconsin

gubernatorial primary with Axios' Holly Otterbine.

Before we get into badger on badger, bad blood, here's what we're following today Wednesday,

August 12th.

It's only up to secret service.

I just follow what they'd like to do.

So I go by secret service and the military.

They wanted me to go in a different flight, a different plane, equal safety, but they wanted

me to do it.

So I do it.

I do what they say.

Well, I don't know.

I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk.

President Donald Trump sounded remarkably sanguine, speaking to reporters at Joint

Base Andrews Tuesday night, where he threw the secret service under the bus from moving

him off Air Force One and onto a decoy plane on the way back from last month's NATO summit.

NPR reported today that a threat was shared with the United States by Israeli intelligence,

who alleged that Iran might use missiles to bring down Air Force One.

And near at times also reported today that US intelligence had picked up similar information.

But in response, Trump told reporters that actually everything with the war in Iran is fine.

Quote, Iran is going fine.

It's going just absolutely fine.

We totally control the straight of our moves.

We have control over it.

Nobody else.

Only us.

Maybe if he says it's going fine one more time, I'll believe it.

US Attorney Jeanine Piro has convened a special grand jury in Washington, DC, according to

a report by the Washington Post.

You might be asking, what's the difference between a special grand jury and a normal grand

jury?

Well, a special grand jury considers a specific case and can issue a critical report about

the subject of its investigation, even if there isn't enough evidence to go to trial.

Sounds pretty petty if you ask me.

We're not sure who or what the special grand jury will be investigating.

And to be clear, Piro's move is unprecedented.

According to sources who spoke with the Post, it's significant, especially considering

the president's affinity for prosecuting his perceived enemies.

Immigration and customs enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can

deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals.

Just so there's no misunderstanding, these are literal gloves worn to shock people into

submission.

The devices are known as GLOVE, which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage a Metter.

They have been used in recent years by some jails and police departments.

According to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE plans

to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of these, quote, conductive distraction and

de-escalation devices.

DHS said Tuesday that it was working on a response to an associated press inquiry and offered

no immediate comment.

The Trump administration plans to spend at least $900 million on a White House construction

according to a Washington Post report.

Remember the good old days when we were only concerned over what was supposed to be a $200

million ballroom?

Well according to the Post, this nearly $1 billion in DEVER by the White House includes

construction on the ballroom, a helipad and a new visitor screening center.

And surprise, surprise, most of that tab will reportedly be picked up by taxpayers, meaning

you and me.

Remember when White House Press Secretary Caroline Levit said this about the ballroom last

year?

It's not going to cost the taxpayers a dime.

So we look forward to this project continuing and we will continue to keep everyone apprised

on it.

So it will instead cost many dimes to recap.

Not only has Trump used my money to help fund his foreign war of choice in Iran, is also

using my money to build a presidential palace.

I thought the government was supposed to serve the people, not an orange king.

And that's the news.

Let's talk about Wisconsin.

On Tuesday, Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong narrowly lost to Milwaukee's county

executive, David Crowley, in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary.

This was a wild race.

Crowley had actually dropped out back in July to support another candidate who then dropped

out herself.

Then Crowley got back into the race with support from sitting governor Tony Evers.

Now the somewhat unknown is facing Republican representative and 2020 election denier Tom

Tiffany in November, which is not what the GOP wanted.

In Senator Ron Johnson is already sounding the alarm about an enthusiasm gap.

Here he is on Fox News Wednesday.

We had about 500,000 Republicans come out and vote in our primary 700,000 Democrats.

That's the 200,000 vote differential there.

That's what out of concern, Tom Tiffany.

But Crowley may not have an easy time winning over all those Democratic voters.

For more on what Democrats can learn from Crowley's win and Hong's defeat, I spoke with

Holly Otterbine, cheesy senior politics reporter at Axios.

Holly, welcome to what a day.

Thank you for having me.

Democratic socialist Francesca Hong suffered a tight but significant loss to Milwaukee County

executive David Crowley in the Wisconsin governor's race yesterday.

You were with her campaign last week.

Were you surprised?

No, exactly.

I talked to people in her world who told me that they thought that they were going to

eat it out, but that it was going to be much closer than the polls showed.

You could see and feel on the ground that momentum was starting to pick up for Crowley.

I think there was just an assumption among Hong and other folks really across the national

media that that would be too little too late, right?

They were able to close the gap.

Tony Evers campaigned around the state.

He barnstormed with Crowley and he was able to close like a pretty significant gap.

And Crowley put out his own internal polling days ahead of the race showing him down

20 points.

And he was able to defeat that.

So Tony Evers is the current governor.

How popular is he?

He's pretty popular.

That helps a lot.

I mean, like I said, he barnstormed around the state for Crowley.

He also explicitly argued that Francesca Hong was a general election liability in a very

like Midwestern way also.

I was like, he didn't say liability.

He said something.

No, no, no, no, no, no, incredibly polite that no one else would be able to understand it

if you were not from the Midwest.

Correct, correct.

I think a reporter asked him like, do you think that Francesca Hong can beat Tom Tiffany,

the Republican nominee in November?

And he said, probably not.

That was like an earthquake, right?

I mean, that was just huge for the Midwest.

Yeah, that's a real banger.

So that influenced a lot of people.

I think that the voters at the end of the election on both sides were paying super close

attention to every in and out of the race.

Like I picked that up talking to people.

And I think they 100% saw that Evers said that that he was making these arguments that

he was signaling that Crowley was the alternative to Hong, the quote unquote, you know, in his

view, more electable alternative to Hong.

They listened and they re-aligned.

Realigning behind a candidate, you think is better suited to beat Republicans.

Democrats should drive that more often.

We'll be back with my conversation with Holly Otterbine in a moment.

But in the meantime, make sure to subscribe.

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Let's get back to my conversation with Holly Otterbine.

So I think that there are some who are interpreting Hong's loss as being a problem for the larger

progressive movement.

You've seen progressives win across the country.

Obviously, it states differ.

But one poll a few weeks ago had Hong winning by about 20 or so points.

But it sounds to me like she actually hit her expected vote total.

It's just that the opposition looked very different from the way it did a few weeks ago.

So what happened?

A hundred percent.

That is exactly what happened.

There's been a lot of discussion after this race about how this is another pulling mess

like in Michigan.

It's really different.

As you said, Hong actually met her mark.

The polls showed that she was going to be at 40%.

That's exactly what she ended up getting.

It's just that in the intervening time period, a lot of stuff happened since they last

pulled.

There was this huge momentum.

There was this barnstorm by Evers.

At the very last minute, Mandela Barnes, another progressive candidate, dropped out a

mid-a scandal.

They had brought Crowley back in at the last minute after another candidate, Sarah Rodriguez

left because of scandal.

It was an insane race.

So a lot of things changed.

They were just sampling it at a moment in time, I think, because we saw in the last couple

polls, he went from 10 to 20% over the course of a few days.

It was clear that something was shifting.

You were talking about how voters were paying such close attention to every in and out of

this race.

And something that came up recently was past comments made by Hong.

And unlike what we tend to see when people are talking about old tweets, they weren't

exactly offensive.

They were just very, how best to put it.

Very pandemic.

Saying that the US should cancel Thanksgiving, for example.

What did the Wisconsin voters you spoke to think about that?

They were worried about what it would mean in November.

And that includes Hong fans.

So at nearly every Hong event that I went to, she was asked about her posts.

And she was asked how she would run against Tiffany in November.

You know, there was this one little old lady who asked a question at one of her events.

And she said that she had essentially been a secret socialist for her life, but that she

was concerned about it and that word.

And just concerned, I think, seems like she was concerned writ large about what was going

on in the race.

And she asked, Hong, like, how are you going to deal with this?

And do you think the socialism word is going to scare people?

People asked about the defund, the police posts asked about the cancel Thanksgiving posts.

Like it just came up every single place that she went.

And again, I thought that was so telling just a signal of how much these voters are really

paying super close attention to what's going on.

So they didn't necessarily disagree with her.

Voters were thinking, we want to beat this guy.

Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, I was following Hong around so that obviously attracted a certain type of voter,

right?

I think that there's no doubt that within the Democratic Party, there are voters who are

turned off and do not agree with her on past tweets like cancel Thanksgiving and defund

the police.

Like they disagree with that on a substance level.

In fact, I would say that's probably, that's most, like a large majority of Democratic

voters fit that.

I think I was more thinking towards like they agree with her policy suggestions, the

Democratic Socialist Policy, because I think that to that point, and I'm curious as

to your thought, Wisconsin is considered the birthplace of American progressivism.

And you have an older woman going to an event talking about kind of being a secret socialist.

So why do you think the socialist element was a concern for voters?

Because it sounds like something that people were agreeing with, but they understood that

that could be a challenge in November.

Yeah, the history is super interesting.

As you mentioned, there's this rich history of socialism in Wisconsin, you know, the quote

unquote sewer socialist mayors ran, you know, the city government in Milwaukee for, you

know, like 50 some years.

So that like DNA is there.

And clearly a lot of voters there and elsewhere throughout the country want those socialist

policies.

I think the concern was that it wouldn't work in November potentially.

And it makes sense.

Like it hasn't been done, right?

I mean, there has never been a socialist governor in US history.

She would have been the first if she had pulled it off.

So I think they were like struggling to sort of imagine how it would work.

And that's why you got these people asking these questions like, okay, but what's the

reason?

Like how are you going to take on Tiffany as a socialist?

Is that going to be, you know, a word that scares people off?

Now, Crowley will be facing, as I mentioned, Republican representative Tom Tiffany in the

general election denier.

I should note.

That is not what Republicans wanted.

A side piece of this campaign was how much money Republicans spent to support Hong, who

actually did not spend that much money or any money on television at all.

But even though Hong lost, she got a ton of votes about 300,000 and Crowley is going to

need those votes.

In your view, what does Crowley need to do to win over Hong's voters?

It's going to be a challenge.

I mean, as you said, it's 300,000 voters.

A lot of these people were younger.

A lot of them were pretty disillusioned with the quote unquote establishment.

And I talked to them on the trail like they were already angry.

You know, I talked to a woman who was a former state party official herself, part of the

establishment, right?

And she was so ticked off at Evers for endorsing Crowley and saying that Hong, you know, likely

couldn't win in the general election.

She asked, is he trying to sabotage us?

So that's like the level of anger that was already there.

I think Crowley is clearly taking some steps to unite the party already.

And Hong is as well.

Hong conceded to Crowley very quickly once it was clear what the election results were.

I just saw on Twitter that they were or X that they were at a unity meal together today.

They said that he's going to go on a unity tour with the, you know, other candidates

in the race.

So they're definitely doing like sort of logistically some of the steps that you have to do to unite

the party.

One question that I have is whether he will take a more substantial pivot to the left in

policy.

And you know, just putting out there one thing that he could do is something on data centers.

You know, Hong ran aggressively on a data center moratorium when I was following her

round and kind of these far flung parts of Wisconsin.

There were signs up, you know, saying, you know, anti data center.

That energy is there.

It's clear and it is popular across the general electorate when I asked him, he does not support

a data center moratorium.

He says it's a local issue essentially.

That issue is there potentially as an option to unite the party.

It seems to me that and maybe this is going to be more of a concern for 2028, but the

differences between center left and progressives that seems like a larger issue with Democrats

across the country.

How do you think Democrats can unite as a whole or is it something where Democrats can

unite if they are facing a common enemy?

I think that helps.

I mean, I think the fact that Tiffany is, as you said, an election denier and it's worth

kind of pointing out what he has done.

He voted in Congress to overturn the 2020 election results.

He stated, and I think it's still up on his website, that there were thousands of illegal

votes cast in Wisconsin.

He also signed on to a Paxton lawsuit by the Texas AG, Kim Paxton, aimed at overturning

results.

I think that really helps Democrats unite, right?

I mean, no one, no progressive, no moderate Democrat wants an election denier to be in charge

of a major swing state in 2028.

And so he does some of the work for them for sure.

Holly, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

It was great.

That was my conversation with Holly Otterbine, senior politics reporter at Axios.

Before we go, this Thursday, former Vice President Kamala Harris

and Stacey Abrams sit down to consider how we as a nation look beyond Donald Trump

and towards the future.

They discuss the steps we need to take to protect our democracy and revive the American dream.

Check out the Assembly Required Bonus episode with Kamala Harris tomorrow on YouTube or

wherever you get your podcasts.

That's all for today.

If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review.

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Check it out and subscribe at crook.com slash subscribe.

I'm Jane Kostin.

And that's what happens during a war of choice.

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Suffer.

Today is a production of Crooked Media.

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Hey, so listen, whether you're in the States across the pond or somewhere on the other side

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It's called Potsay for the UK.

Potsay for the UK is a no bullshit, unabashedly progressive conversation about politics focused

on the issues that matter most of the people of Britain.

With all the changes in our government, including the fund revolving door of Prime Ministers

we have here, there's always lots to talk about.

And there's lots of fabulous guests to talk to, journalist politicians, experts, comedians

and activists.

Yeah, we've had great comedians on as well, like Rosie Jones, Stuart Lee, Ashling B. We've

also had Tommy Vittor on, who may be our boss.

We still go.

We're not quite clear on who our boss is.

I thought it might be Tommy Vittor.

I thought it might be John Favreau.

I don't know if it's John Lovett.

It's hard to say.

It's not clear to us who our bosses are.

Some of our listeners call us irreverent but not stupid.

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