The 2026 midterm elections were supposed to be a gimme. Trump's second term, an energized opposition, favorable historical patterns — Democrats had every reason to expect a wave. Political analysts had been predicting a path to recapture the House, maybe even the Senate.
Then the candidates showed up.
Joe Scarborough — one of the most recognizable liberal voices on television — watched his own party blow the opportunity and couldn't stay quiet. On Morning Joe, he unloaded with a sports analogy that cuts right to it: Democrats are "fumbling the football on the two-yard line when they have a chance to make great gains."
He went further, drawing a comparison to the last time Democrats threw away an election cycle. "It seems an awful lot like what was happening in 2024," Scarborough said. That year, Democrats lost the presidency, the Senate, and their House minority. "The Democratic Party has a choice to make."
The candidate who triggered Scarborough's alarm is Francesca Hong — a Wisconsin state assemblywoman, card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the frontrunner in Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary today. Hong campaigns alongside Ilhan Omar and internet commentator Hasan Piker, two of the most divisive anti-Israel voices in American politics. Her record on Hamas is the kind that makes Jewish voters in her own party uncomfortable. Her policy positions include police abolition and — straight from her record — canceling Thanksgiving.
She's polling far ahead in the primary.
The DSA platform Hong runs on is published on their own website. Abolish capitalism. Abolish the police. Abolish the Senate. Abolish ICE. Boycott and divest from Israel. In July, Bill Maher read directly from it on national television and called it "communism." These aren't right-wing characterizations — they're the party's own words, in writing.
Republicans already know what to do with this. The Trump campaign has spent $30 million on ads highlighting exactly these positions to working-class voters, and the money has moved people across demographic groups. It worked in 2024. The setup is identical.
Scarborough sees the pattern. Democrats running DSA-backed candidates in competitive states aren't just making bad strategic choices — they're handing Republicans a loaded weapon and then acting surprised when they get hit with it. "Democrats, once again, fumbling the football on the two-yard line," he said.
The midterms were supposed to be about accountability — the normal cyclical correction in American politics. What they're turning into, in Wisconsin and states like it, is a referendum on whether the Democratic Party can field a candidate who will simply say, when asked, that Hamas is a terrorist organization.
That's the ask. Disavow Hamas. Oppose the group that massacred Israeli civilians on October 7th and still holds hostages. Some Democratic candidates can't do it. Or won't.
Scarborough is a lifelong liberal who wants Democrats to win. He's watching his own team blow a race they should own, saying what the party knows but won't admit out loud.
The ball is on the two-yard line. Democrats keep dropping it.