{"id":47016,"date":"2026-08-15T17:21:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T12:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=47016"},"modified":"2026-08-15T17:21:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T12:21:47","slug":"2026-midterms-hasan-piker-isnt-retreating-after-a-setback-in-wisconsin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=47016","title":{"rendered":"2026 midterms: Hasan Piker isn\u2019t retreating after a setback in Wisconsin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"zephr-anchor\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Hasan Piker has for years now been both an asset and a liability for Democrats. The Twitch streamer has elevated base-energizing progressives, such as Darializa Avila Chevalier and Zohran Mamdani, in interviews and with endorsements. But he\u2019s also stoked controversy with past anti-Israel commentary and generally caused headaches for establishment Democrats who would rather not see Hasan\u2019s favored candidates get any more oxygen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Why? A familiar concept for these kinds of centrist Democrats: electability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">That concept has been on many left-leaning voters\u2019 minds over the past few weeks, as primaries have put progressive candidates to the test \u2014 with very mixed results. Last week, Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate and democratic socialist Francesca Hong lost her primary to establishment favorite David Crowley. Not long before that, though, progressive Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed won his primary against the more mainstream Democratic candidate, Rep. Haley Stevens \u2014 albeit by a much smaller margin than many polls predicted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\"><em>America, Actually<\/em> host Astead Herndon caught up with Piker to talk about whether the recent primary results have refined his understanding of how prepared Americans are to vote for democratic socialists, what support for unabashedly progressive candidates tells us about the changing working class in America, and the \u201cpundit brain\u201d problem in the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Below is an excerpt of Astead\u2019s conversation with Piker, edited for length and clarity. There\u2019s much more in the full show, so <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/dm\/podcast\/america-actually-with-astead-herndon\/id1890552134\">listen to <em>America, Actually<\/em><\/a> wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCLXo7UDZvByw2ixzpQCufnA\">Vox\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\"><strong>The last two weeks have produced mixed results for left-wing candidates: a big win in Michigan and a win this week in Minnesota for Peggy Flanagan, but a loss for Francesca Hong, which was a surprise in Wisconsin.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\"><strong>What have been your takeaways from the last set of results?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I think the ground game is phenomenal. There\u2019s a lot of excitement on the platform. There\u2019s a lot of excitement for the first time for \u201cChange Candidates.\u201d It\u2019s still a good environment to be in if you are a socialist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The establishment does have a lot of juice still, for sure. And when they can put together a similar strategy to what happened in 2020 against Bernie Sanders with Joe Biden, especially in a place like Wisconsin where Tony Evers is very clearly still a very popular governor, they were able to elevate David Crowley\u2019s campaign, who actually had dropped out and consolidated support behind Sara Rodriguez initially. And he had to drop out because he was only performing at, like, 6 percent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\"><strong>Yeah, the consolidation was swift, and it was complete. I mean, you\u2019re comparing it to 2020, in which the establishment lined up behind Joe Biden and kind of nixed that Bernie Sanders campaign in the blink of an eye. I imagine you were surprised at the result.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I never underestimate my opponents, whether they be Republicans or whether they be establishment Democrats. You have to always operate as though you\u2019re down 10 points. I don\u2019t believe in the notion that we are going to win easy victories at the end of the day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">There are a lot of powerful interests at play here. There are a lot of people in positions of power that don\u2019t wanna lose their seats. So they\u2019re gonna fight like hell, so we have to also fight like hell. We have to fight extra hard, as a matter of fact, because we\u2019re almost always outspent, right?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\"><strong>I got an alert right before we started talking from the New York Times that said, \u201cA democratic socialist lost in Wisconsin, which shows the movement\u2019s surging wave might crash before rippling out from big cities.\u201d Is that wrong?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Oh, I love that. Look, people are gonna have their opinions. I\u2019ll just say it like this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Abdul El-Sayed\u2019s one-point victory margin showed that the Democratic socialist-aligned movement or the progressive movement was in tatters. It was obviously a failure. And now, David Crowley\u2019s less-than-one-point victory proves that the centrist bulwark is still here, and that the Democratic socialist movement is dying.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">It kind of feels like it\u2019s wish-casting for the most part, from a lot of people who maybe want to go back to the way things used to be. My assessment on this is definitely a little bit different. I think, at the end of the day, these are insurgencies, right? These are insurgent candidacies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">We\u2019re talking about no name recognition for a state legislator that was entirely propped up by local Wisconsin DSA chapters. These people didn\u2019t have a lot of money necessarily, and they were able to defy the odds, and they continued defying the odds all the way until the end.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The idea that the polls showed that Francesca was a clear frontrunner and was running away with this race is utterly irrelevant. Especially if you were to look at this with a broader perspective, like thinking about where Democratic Socialists of America have gotten to in the last two years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I mean, I remember how I felt in 2024, in the aftermath of the DNC, about where the American socialist movement was as opposed to where it is now. We are clearly a force to be reckoned with, and that\u2019s precisely the reason why a lot of people are paying close attention to what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">And I\u2019ll say it like this. The fact that the Hong campaign did not have any major progressive national endorsements, and that I was like their top surrogate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\"><strong>There was no Bernie Sanders endorsement, there was no AOC endorsement. That did make the Hong campaign unique on that front.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I think there were a couple other races that I was also involved in where my candidates lost, right?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I mean, Saikat Chakrabarti was another great example of this as well. It wasn\u2019t a statewide race, and obviously, there\u2019s always clear local differences that play a formative role in how these races turn out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">But we\u2019ve looked back at this data. There are a couple different endorsement trackers out there, and they\u2019ll put my endorsement up there, and they\u2019ll put, like, AOC and Bernie Sanders. And it\u2019s very clear that the best likelihood of success usually comes from a consolidation of national progressive forces, whether it be outside expenditures coming from Justice Democrats or things like that. And with the Francesca Hong campaign, I think it\u2019s a testament to their success. It\u2019s a testament to how popular the platform is in general.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">And one thing I will have to stress here is the salience of the electability narrative. I think that\u2019s still a real motivator for a lot of people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\"><strong>Yeah, I hear that. Both El-Sayed\u2019s campaign and Hong\u2019s campaign did better among middle-class voters \u2014 I should say, than the data would tell us, among working-class voters. Considering how central working-class and bottom-up issues are to the DSA message, why has it not produced results that actually get it more working-class votes? Because that does seem to be something we\u2019ve learned over the last three, four weeks.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I think that we have to dramatically reconstruct how we understand what it means to be working-class in this country. I think a lot of people will disagree with what I\u2019m about to say here, but we have to do away with this fantastical notion that the working-class is one specific thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I think for the longest time, people have thought about this hardhat-wearing coal miner as the true working class, oftentimes White as well. And the working class is unbelievably diverse in this country, and it\u2019s also a lot more college-educated than people actually give it credit for.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I think partially this is because if you look back to the \u201890s as opposed to right now, yes, if you had a college education, you were upwardly mobile. You were probably a professional managerial class individual that was going to be able to retire at a reasonable age. You were doing fairly well. It was a guarantee for getting a good job, right?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">That\u2019s not the case in America any longer. There are a lot more people who have a college degree who are downwardly mobile, who are having a very tough time in the current job market, who do not own a home, and it\u2019s seemingly less likely than before that they will ever be able to own a home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">And that is the actual working class. It\u2019s much broader, right? So we\u2019ve seen in Zohran\u2019s race and in Abdul\u2019s race, there\u2019s this massive group of working-class folks that constantly get cast aside as not being a true representation of the American working class, when I think like, <em>No, that is the true representation.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hasan Piker has for years now been both an asset and a liability for Democrats. The Twitch streamer has elevated base-energizing progressives, such as Darializa Avila Chevalier and Zohran Mamdani, in interviews and with endorsements. But he\u2019s also stoked controversy with past anti-Israel commentary and generally caused headaches for establishment Democrats who would rather not&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/gettyimages-2288058687.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C10.732984293194%2C100%2C78.534031413613&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}