Woke socialism is an albatross haunting Democrats heading into the 2026 midterm election.
A string of resurfaced social media statements is making the situation worse.
And now one Democrat Socialist’s attack on Thanksgiving will make your blood boil.
The Posts Democrats Were Hoping Nobody Would Find
Francesca Hong, the likely Democrat nominee for governor in Wisconsin backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, once argued that Americans should not celebrate Thanksgiving. “Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621,” Hong wrote in a now-deleted post to X.
She added, “If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed indigenous folx [sic] and women, so be it.”
The post, which was originally made in November 2020, sheds more light on Hong’s progressive thinking as she emerges as a frontrunner in the Wisconsin gubernatorial contest and drew mockery online.
But the Thanksgiving post wasn’t even the one that got people talking the loudest.
Hong also started getting mocked for a resurfaced 2019 post where she said, “I ate two bites of my kid’s cheeseburger at a Culver’s in black river falls and told him they ran out of ice cream. Mostly just wanted to leave bc I was on the verge of a anxiety attack…to (sic) many old white people who didn’t think we spoke english.”
Former White House Principal Deputy Communications Director Alex Pfeiffer wrote on X, “Bold choice for Democrats in Wisconsin running someone statewide who gets a panic attack at Culver’s at the sight of ‘old white people.'”
Chuck Ross, an investigative reporter at the Washington Free Beacon, added on X, “The only way this post could be worse for someone running for office in Wisconsin is if she had complained that Culver’s uses too much butter.”
Wisconsin is roughly 85 percent white. Running a candidate who publicly wrote about getting anxiety attacks around white people at a fast food restaurant is, to put it gently, a strategic gamble.
A Record Built on Radical Positions She’s Now Running From
The social media posts are embarrassing. But they’re almost a distraction from the actual policy record Hong spent years building.
Hong wrote on social media in 2020 that she supported “defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police,” and said in 2021 that policing itself upholds white supremacy, adding, “Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option.”
Hong is also facing scrutiny after a years-old social media post calling to “Abolish the Senate” resurfaced. “Abolish the Senate,” Hong, a self-described socialist, wrote in February 2021 while replying to a post from human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid.
Her campaign’s response to that one was something else. When pressed about her 2021 “Abolish the Senate” post, Hong would only say she does not back the full platform of the national DSA; her campaign separately told Fox News Digital she does not recall writing the post.
She doesn’t recall writing a post that’s still live on X. Sure.
Hong rejected her previous position on policing, noting that the governor of Wisconsin would be unable to defund the police, and promising that if elected she “won’t defund the police.” But when Fox News anchor Dana Perino pressed her on whether she personally had changed her view, Hong attempted to sidestep, saying she believes “people can evolve.”
The exchange revived scrutiny of Hong’s comments following the 2020 police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha. Hong called for abolishing police in a 2021 social media post after federal prosecutors declined to charge the officer who shot Blake.
Tuesday night, Hong suddenly tried to distance herself from her own record. After years of publicly advocating to “defund then abolish” the police, she claimed, “the governor cannot defund police.”
When Fox News asked directly whether Hong was personally a dues-paying member of the DSA, she replied, “In my home chapter in Madison I have been since 2020…as a Democratic socialist I am less defined by just one organization.”
And yet the Madison DSA, the Milwaukee DSA, and the Northeast Wisconsin DSA are all listed among her campaign’s backers. You can’t have it both ways.
Hong has leaned into her socialist record in her campaign, describing it as ensuring that “working-class people have their fair share.” Among other platform positions, Hong is championing race-based grants for social workers, publicly funded grocery stores and a state-run bank.
A state-run bank. Publicly funded grocery stores. Race-based grants. This isn’t a fringe platform being whispered behind closed doors — it’s what she’s running on, in a swing state that Donald Trump won in 2016 and came within a razor’s edge of winning in 2020.
What Happens If Wisconsin Hands This Woman a Governor’s Mansion
Francesca Hong has widened her lead in the Democratic primary for governor, according to the latest Marquette Law School Poll. Hong comes in at 38%, followed by Mandela Barnes at 16% and David Crowley at 7%.
Marquette pollster Charles Franklin said the results put Hong at 46% of the primary electorate when undecided leaners are included. “That’s a substantial boost for Hong on those leaned votes,” Franklin said. “It’s putting her awfully close to half of the primary electorate in a crowded field.”
Recent polling shows Hong trailing her Republican opponent Tom Tiffany by three percentage points as campaign finance reports reveal a massive fundraising gap between the candidates.
Three points is close. Too close for comfort.
Tom Tiffany maintained that Hong “can’t hide who she is,” calling her a “card-carrying socialist” whose campaign is trying to rewrite her record.
He’s right. And the deleted posts are the proof. You don’t delete things you’re proud of. You delete things you know will hurt you with the voters you’re trying to win over.
“Francesca Hong has spent years embracing one of the most radical agendas in American politics, and now she’s trying to pretend voters didn’t see any of it,” said Republican State Leadership Committee Deputy Communications Director Holden Sczerba.
The pattern here is worth paying attention to. A candidate builds a public record over years — abolish the police, abolish the Senate, cancel Thanksgiving, panic attacks at Culver’s — and then, the moment a general election audience starts paying attention, she starts walking things back. She doesn’t recall the posts. She’s evolved. The governor can’t do that anyway.
Wisconsin voters deserve to know what they’re actually getting. The posts don’t lie, even when the campaign does.
The July 22 Marquette Poll showed 49% of registered voters in Wisconsin have an unfavorable view of the DSA organization and the democratic socialist label. Nearly half the state already has a negative view of the brand Hong is running on. The question is whether enough of them show up in November to do something about it.
Socialism has a track record. It’s not a theory. Every country that has tried to run its economy through centralized government control has produced the same results: shortages, rationing, the hollowing out of the middle class, and the concentration of power in the hands of people who were absolutely certain they knew better than everyone else. Hong’s platform — state-run banks, government grocery stores, race-based allocation of resources — is that same playbook with a Wisconsin accent.
And if the Democrat establishment in Madison can’t find a candidate who doesn’t think Thanksgiving should be canceled and that Culver’s is a hotbed of racial hostility, that’s a problem they’ve created for themselves. The resurfaced posts didn’t come from nowhere. They came from a candidate who said exactly what she believed, for years, and assumed nobody would go looking.
Somebody went looking.
Sources: Fox News Digital; Marquette Law School Poll; Washington Free Beacon; Republican State Leadership Committee; Fox News America’s Newsroom; Trending Politics News; Washington Times