The fight inside the Democratic Party is bigger than socialist versus moderate. It is inherited politics versus emerging politics, manufactured outrage versus material reality, institutional gatekeeping versus distributed political networks—and a generation of leaders still trying to govern a world that has already changed.
“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” — John 8:7
That may be one of the most relevant political instructions in America right now.
Not because politicians should be immune from accountability.
Not because words do not matter.
Not because voters should ignore what candidates have said or done.
But because American politics has developed an increasingly absurd ritual in which people with decades of their own mistakes, contradictions, changed positions, embarrassing statements and political compromises search through someone else’s digital history, locate an unconventionally worded sentence, isolate it from the moment in which it was written, attach the most politically damaging interpretation possible, manufacture outrage around it—and then demand that the candidate spend the campaign proving that one sentence does not define an entire human being.
Francesca Hong is simply the latest target.
And Democrats are once again missing the point.
On the morning of Wisconsin’s August 11 Democratic gubernatorial primary, Hong represents much more than another progressive candidate attempting to win another election.
Her campaign has become another test of whether the Democratic establishment understands the political transformation occurring underneath it.
Politico’s latest examination of Hong places her within the growing national progressive movement while emphasizing something that establishment politicians clearly believe should weaken her: controversial old social-media statements, skepticism from prominent Democrats and the absence of endorsements from figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Other reporting has documented the same establishment concern. Outgoing Democratic Gov. Tony Evers endorsed David Crowley, while Hong has faced sustained scrutiny over posts involving Thanksgiving, policing and other subjects.
But that political response reveals the larger problem.
Democratic leaders keep looking at Francesca Hong and seeing the tweets.
A growing portion of the electorate looks at the political establishment and sees everything else.
They see housing costs.
Healthcare costs.
Childcare.
Wages.
Food prices.
Public education.
Corporate power.
Political money.
Foreign wars.
Economic insecurity.
And political institutions that somehow always seem capable of finding enormous amounts of energy for another controversy while millions of Americans are trying to figure out how to afford their lives.
That is the divide.
And Democrats continue standing on the wrong side of it.
Let Him Cast the First Stone
Start with the obvious.
People change.
People mature.
People reconsider things they once believed.
People learn from experience.
People become parents.
They lose jobs.
They start businesses.
They meet people they did not understand before.
They experience institutions from the inside.
They read.
They listen.
They govern.
They fail.
They improve.
They grow up.
That process is called being human.
Hong herself has said that some of her previous posts were “hot takes” or “bad takes” and that she has evolved and learned. Reporting on her more recent statements shows that some positions she expressed years ago are not the positions she currently says she would pursue as governor.
That should not require a constitutional crisis.
The relevant question is straightforward:
What does Francesca Hong believe today, and what would Francesca Hong do as governor?
If voters disagree with those positions, they can vote against her.
That is democracy.
But demanding that a person forever remain politically chained to every sentence they have ever typed creates a completely different standard.
It creates a politics in which growth itself becomes suspicious.
Change your mind and you are a flip-flopper.
Refuse to change your mind and you are an extremist.
Explain yourself and the explanation becomes another headline.
Apologize and the apology becomes evidence that the original statement must have been terrible.
Refuse to apologize and the refusal becomes another controversy.
The candidate cannot win because winning the argument was never the purpose.
The purpose was to trap the candidate inside the argument.
That is the outrage cycle.
And Hong should refuse to live inside it.
Social Media Changed the Political Archive
There is another reason the traditional scandal model is becoming increasingly obsolete.
The political class is entering an era in which enormous portions of people’s lives have been documented online.
For younger generations especially, political candidates will increasingly arrive in public office carrying years—or eventually decades—of tweets, Facebook posts, Reddit comments, Instagram captions, videos, podcast appearances, livestream clips, group conversations and other digital material.
Some of it will be thoughtful.
Some of it will be foolish.
Some of it will be funny.
Some of it will age terribly.
Some of it will reflect beliefs the person still holds.
Some of it will reflect a person who no longer exists.
And almost all of it can be detached from its original context.
This changes politics structurally.
The old political model treated the discovery of an embarrassing quotation as though investigators had uncovered a secret document hidden in somebody’s attic.
The emerging political environment is different.
Everybody has receipts.
That does not mean every receipt is meaningless.
A statement advocating violence matters.
Evidence of corruption matters.
Racial or religious hatred matters.
Repeated dishonesty matters.
A position that directly contradicts what a candidate is currently telling voters deserves examination.
But there is a difference between evaluating evidence and performing outrage.
The distinction is becoming increasingly important because the searchable human archive is becoming enormous.
If political operatives can take any old sentence, remove its time, context, emotional state, rhetorical purpose and subsequent personal development, and then declare the speaker permanently defined by it, eventually virtually everyone who has lived publicly online becomes politically disqualifiable.
That standard cannot survive the social-media age.
Republicans and Democrats Cannot Apply a Standard They Would Never Survive Themselves
There is also an enormous hypocrisy problem.
Donald Trump’s own history demonstrates it.
Trump’s social-media conduct became so controversial that Twitter permanently suspended his account following January 6, while Facebook and Instagram also suspended him before eventually restoring access.
Yet Donald Trump returned to the presidency.
Whatever anyone thinks about Trump, that fact alone destroys the proposition that possessing a controversial digital history automatically determines whether someone can become politically viable.
American voters clearly do not apply such a simple equation.
And Democratic politicians should be extremely careful about helping Republicans establish a standard they themselves would never consistently apply to Republicans.
The same principle applies internally.
How many Democrats who have spent twenty or thirty years in politics have changed their positions?
On criminal justice?
Immigration?
Trade?
War?
Marriage equality?
Marijuana?
Healthcare?
Government surveillance?
Foreign policy?
Israel?
Campaign finance?
Economic policy?
The answer is obvious.
Political evolution happens constantly.
Yet when a younger challenger evolves, suddenly growth becomes evidence of untrustworthiness.
That is not a coherent standard.
It is incumbent protection disguised as moral concern.
And younger voters are increasingly capable of detecting the contradiction.
The Thanksgiving Controversy Demonstrates the Absurdity
Consider one of the central controversies surrounding Hong.
In November 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a wider national discussion about colonial history, Hong posted that Thanksgiving should be canceled and criticized the historical mythology surrounding the holiday. Years later, that post has become national campaign material.
Donald Trump has attacked her over it.
Republicans have circulated it.
Media interviews have returned repeatedly to it.
Democrats have expressed concern about it.
Gov. Evers even criticized the amount of time Hong was spending dealing with what he called “what’s on the Twitter.”
Think about the structure of what is happening.
Politicians complain that Hong is spending too much time discussing an old tweet.
Those same political institutions continue asking her about the old tweet.
Media organizations ask about it.
Opponents advertise it.
Party figures comment on it.
Analysts debate it.
Then everyone observes that Hong is discussing the tweet.
That is a self-created political feedback loop.
And somewhere outside the television studio, a Wisconsin parent still needs childcare.
Hong’s actual campaign includes proposals involving universal childcare, public education and other economic concerns. She has also made opposition to new data-center construction a defining component of her campaign.
Those ideas can be debated.
They can be criticized.
They can be supported.
Economists can examine them.
Republicans can attack them.
Democrats can offer alternatives.
Voters can decide whether they want them.
That would constitute an election.
Instead, national politics repeatedly asks:
But what did she tweet six years ago about Thanksgiving?
Jesus supplied the appropriate response two thousand years ago.
Let the person without sin cast the first stone.
The Real Political Skill Is Refusing the Frame
This is where Hong can learn from Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed and Melat Kiros.
The lesson is not that candidates should never answer difficult questions.
The lesson is that opponents should never be allowed to determine the center of your political campaign.
Mamdani built his successful New York campaign around the cost of living. His agenda was recognizable because voters could identify what he wanted government to do: address rent, transportation, housing and everyday affordability.
Criticism came.
Controversies came.
National attention came.
But the central message remained recognizable.
New York is too expensive.
That is message discipline.
Abdul El-Sayed demonstrated something similar in Michigan.
The Democratic establishment watched extraordinary outside spending flow into his Senate primary, including tens of millions of dollars from AIPAC and affiliated groups supporting Haley Stevens. El-Sayed nevertheless won the Democratic nomination.
He did not win by answering every accusation until his opponents ran out of accusations.
They never run out.
He stayed centered on the political argument he wanted voters to hear.
Melat Kiros provided another warning.
The 29-year-old democratic socialist defeated 15-term incumbent Diana DeGette in Colorado’s Democratic congressional primary—another example of an establishment advantage failing to guarantee an electoral outcome.
Mamdani.
Kiros.
El-Sayed.
Now Hong.
At some point Democrats have to stop examining each race as an isolated curiosity and examine the pattern connecting them.
Yesterday’s Reality Check Was About More Than Israel
Royal Politics argued yesterday that the emerging conflict inside the Democratic Party is being misunderstood.
The article focused heavily on Israel, AIPAC, political money and the widening gap between Democratic voters and older institutional assumptions surrounding foreign policy.
But the deeper structural argument went beyond Israel.
It identified the divide this way:
Inherited politics versus emerging politics.
Institutional dependency versus political independence.
Old money versus new voters.
Foreign-policy orthodoxy versus domestic priorities.
Fear versus coherence.
Francesca Hong adds another dimension to precisely the same political divide.
Archival politics versus present reality.
Manufactured outrage versus material concerns.
Institutional gatekeeping versus distributed communication.
Political perfectionism versus human growth.
Message capture versus message discipline.
It is the same structural conflict appearing through another issue.
The old political system says:
We found something controversial.
The emerging electorate increasingly asks:
Okay. What are you going to do about my rent?
The old system says:
This candidate has unconventional associations.
The voter asks:
What are you going to do about healthcare?
The old system says:
This person once used politically dangerous language.
The voter asks:
Can I afford childcare?
The old system says:
Party leaders are concerned.
The voter asks:
Why should party leaders decide for me?
That is the political transition Democrats keep failing to understand.
Older Institutions Still Think They Control Political Meaning
Yesterday’s Daily Reality Check identified another transformation that matters enormously in Hong’s race.
The political information system has become distributed.
Older institutions grew powerful in a vertical information environment.
Politicians spoke.
Major newspapers reported.
Television networks interpreted.
Party leaders reacted.
Consultants shaped the message.
Voters received the resulting political narrative.
That architecture has fractured.
Information now moves horizontally through social platforms, independent media, podcasts, livestreams, Reddit communities, group chats, text messages, creators and ordinary conversations between friends.
The earlier Royal Politics analysis described this as a distributed political network—one that Washington frequently fails to recognize because it does not resemble the organizations through which earlier generations built political power.
Hong’s campaign fits directly into that transition.
Reporting from Wisconsin describes an energetic grassroots operation built through hundreds of community events, unconventional appearances and digital engagement. Her rise occurred despite skepticism from establishment Democrats and without endorsements from Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez.
That last point may be more important than Democrats realize.
Even the famous progressive gatekeepers are not necessary anymore.
Bernie Sanders does not have to authorize a progressive movement.
AOC does not have to authorize it.
The Democratic National Committee does not have to authorize it.
MSNBC does not have to authorize it.
A newspaper editorial board does not have to authorize it.
The network can organize anyway.
That is what decentralization means.
The Establishment Keeps Mistaking Loss of Control for Voter Confusion
This may explain some of the anxiety surrounding candidates like Hong.
Traditional political institutions tend to interpret losing control over the political narrative as evidence that voters have become irrational.
They have not necessarily become irrational.
They have become harder to control.
Those are different things.
A voter can watch a television segment describing Hong as radical, open a browser, find the original post, watch her full interview, read her campaign platform, listen to a podcast conversation with her, discuss it in a group chat, see what critics say, compare competing evidence and reach an independent conclusion.
That conclusion may still be that Hong is too progressive.
That is entirely possible.
But the important structural change is that the institutional intermediary no longer possesses exclusive authority to determine the conclusion.
Yesterday’s Royal Politics article described younger political networks as efficient contradiction detectors.
That matters here too.
If Democratic officials insist Hong’s old statements make her unfit for office, voters can immediately search those same officials’ histories.
If Republicans make controversial social-media behavior the standard, Trump’s archive becomes part of the comparison.
If politicians say people should be punished politically for evolving, voters can search how those politicians’ own positions changed over twenty years.
The archive works in both directions.
That is why authenticity increasingly matters more than artificial perfection.
The Opposition Wants Chaos
There is also a basic strategic reason Hong should stop treating every outrage cycle as an obligation.
Chaos benefits the politician without a message.
If an opponent cannot defeat your economic argument, the easiest alternative is to make sure nobody hears it.
Produce a controversy.
Demand a response.
Interpret the response.
Demand another response.
Ask allies whether they condemn the response.
Ask other politicians whether they will withdraw endorsements.
Turn the withdrawal into another story.
Ask whether the candidate has become politically toxic.
Then spend forty-eight hours discussing whether the candidate can survive the controversy created by forty-eight hours of discussing the controversy.
That is political performance.
The candidate’s job is to remain coherent while everyone else performs.
Hong can say what she believes today.
Then move.
Childcare.
Healthcare.
Schools.
Housing.
Wages.
Small businesses.
Economic security.
Data centers.
Taxes.
Public safety.
Whatever she wants Wisconsin voters to judge her governorship on.
Then keep talking about it.
If opponents want to spend August talking about Thanksgiving, let them.
The contrast may eventually become politically useful.
One side appears obsessed with an old social-media post.
The other appears obsessed with governing.
This Is Where Coherence Becomes Political Power
Political coherence does not mean refusing to change.
That is rigidity.
Coherence means knowing what you believe now, explaining it clearly, connecting your policies to an understandable governing philosophy and refusing to allow every external provocation to disorganize your message.
A coherent candidate can say:
I believed something differently six years ago.
I learned.
Here is what I believe today.
Now let’s discuss Wisconsin.
And then actually discuss Wisconsin.
No weeklong apology tour.
No ritual humiliation.
No desperate attempt to convince professional outrage producers that the candidate is sufficiently ashamed.
No campaign surrender.
Growth is allowed.
Maturity is allowed.
Changing your mind is allowed.
The electorate gets to decide whether the explanation is credible.
That decision belongs to voters.
Not political gatekeepers.
The Democratic Divide Is Becoming Impossible to Hide
That brings us back to the larger conflict.
The Democratic Party keeps describing its internal struggle as:
moderates versus progressives.
That description is increasingly inadequate.
There is an ideological divide, certainly.
But underneath it sits something larger.
A divide between politicians formed by twentieth-century institutional politics and voters formed by twenty-first-century networked politics.
A divide between people who think endorsements establish legitimacy and people who see endorsements as optional information.
A divide between politicians who fear enormous outside spending and voters who may interpret enormous outside spending as evidence of establishment panic.
A divide between politicians who believe television framing controls political reality and voters who immediately search for the original video.
A divide between politicians who view a provocative tweet as potentially career-ending and generations who have spent much of their lives communicating imperfectly online.
A divide between political institutions seeking ideological consistency across decades and ordinary human beings who know from their own lives that people change.
A divide between leaders who still believe they are educating the electorate and an electorate increasingly educating itself.
And most importantly:
A divide between a political class obsessed with political performance and Americans obsessed with surviving economically.
That is the divide Democrats need to understand.
Americans Are Suffering While Washington Performs
There is something almost surreal about the political priorities.
Americans are navigating extraordinarily expensive housing.
Families are calculating childcare costs.
People delay medical care because of money.
Workers wonder whether wages will keep pace with their lives.
Young adults question whether homeownership will ever become realistic.
Communities debate the economic and environmental effects of massive new technological infrastructure.
Americans watch enormous amounts of money move through political campaigns.
They watch billions move through government.
They watch political institutions announce what supposedly cannot be afforded domestically while approving enormous commitments elsewhere.
And against that backdrop, professional politics announces another urgent national question:
What did somebody tweet about Thanksgiving in 2020?
That is not sustainable.
The more materially insecure Americans become, the more ridiculous performative politics looks.
The political establishment should understand the danger.
If voters believe institutions care more about language rituals than living conditions, eventually candidates willing to ignore those rituals become attractive precisely because the establishment calls them dangerous.
That inversion was already visible in the previous Reality Check.
Massive spending intended to warn voters about insurgent candidates can authenticate those candidates as outsiders.
Institutional condemnation intended to discredit them can authenticate their independence.
Media outrage intended to marginalize them can introduce them to millions of voters.
And political attacks intended to make them appear unacceptable can remind voters exactly which political institutions are afraid of losing power.
Francesca Hong Does Not Need Permission
That may ultimately be Hong’s most important lesson.
She does not need Bernie Sanders’ permission.
She does not need Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s permission.
She does not need Tony Evers’ permission.
She does not need Republican permission.
She does not need cable-news permission.
She does not even need Royal Politics’ permission.
She needs Wisconsin voters.
That is what elections are for.
If voters hear her current positions and reject them, she loses.
If voters hear them and support them, she wins.
The establishment does not get to substitute its anxiety for the electorate’s judgment.
That is democracy.
And if Democratic leaders actually believe in democracy, they should become more comfortable allowing Democratic voters to make uncomfortable choices.
The Daily Reality Check
“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Democrats should remember the verse.
So should Republicans.
So should the media.
So should every politician searching through another person’s digital history while hoping nobody searches through theirs.
Francesca Hong’s old posts are not the central issue confronting Wisconsin.
They are not the central issue confronting the Democratic Party.
And they certainly are not the central issue confronting America.
The important political question is what candidates believe now and what they intend to do with power.
That is where voters should focus.
And that is where candidates should keep the conversation.
Mamdani demonstrated the power of message discipline.
Kiros demonstrated that incumbency does not guarantee survival.
El-Sayed demonstrated that extraordinary outside spending does not guarantee control.
Hong now represents another test.
Can a candidate confronted by the machinery of outrage refuse to become psychologically captured by it?
Can she let everyone else scream while she keeps talking about Wisconsin?
Can she allow opponents to appear chaotic while remaining centered herself?
That is the strategy.
Because yesterday’s Reality Check remains the larger truth:
The Democratic civil war is not simply socialist versus moderate.
It is inherited politics versus emerging politics.
It is institutional dependency versus political independence.
It is old money versus new voters.
It is political gatekeeping versus distributed political power.
It is manufactured outrage versus material reality.
It is fear versus coherence.
Democrats keep trying to correct the electorate.
They should start correcting themselves.
The voters are not waiting for permission to change.
They have already changed.
The political network has changed.
The media environment has changed.
The meaning of political authenticity has changed.
The tolerance for establishment performance is changing.
And the expectation that someone must possess a perfectly sanitized digital history before being allowed to govern will become more absurd with every generation that grows up online.
People make mistakes.
People say stupid things.
People change their minds.
People mature.
People learn.
People grow.
That is not evidence that democracy is failing.
That is evidence that human beings are participating in it.
So before another politician reaches into Francesca Hong’s past, lifts another digital stone and prepares to throw it, perhaps American politics should return to the question it was asked a very long time ago:
Who among you is without sin?
Then put the stones down.
And start talking about the American people.
Royal Politics examines power beyond the political performance.
Leave a Reply