Note: I'm grateful to have gotten feedback on DSA dynamics, they are posted at the bottom.
People have valid concerns about the DSA platform. I am one of them, and I am wholeheartedly supporting Francesca Hong for governor.
I'm not here to tell you what to think. Every voter should apply their own critical thinking. I am here to tell you these are considerations you can weigh when making your choice.
I was going to break this down into two sections. First, how I view parties, platforms, and politicians, and second, my take on the platform of the National DSA party itself. Then I realized this is actually two separate topics that don't belong in the same conversation. We'll save that for another day.
Francesca Hong is not endorsed by the DSA, and she does not endorse the DSA platform. The DSA platform is not relevant.
This isn't a departure from the norm either. Many politicians don't stick to a party's platform, and many politicians aren't endorsed by a party. When politicians run for office, they have their own platforms. So I look at her policies.
On her site, she has one of the most comprehensive lists of policies I've ever seen from a politician. Many are very specific, linking to examples of bills she's worked on or information on how the policy is working in other states.
It's so common and valid to complain that politicians never come out and say what they are for. She has been crystal clear, and many people don't even pay attention.
Here are other things to keep in mind.
When I first decided to vote for her, I loved the policies but realized that priorities matter a lot; you can't do it all. I got the answer at an event in Green Bay. The first thing she talked about was priorities, and hers were education and affordability. Everything I've seen since then has been aligned with that.
Government is a group assignment. Even if we end up with a Democratic legislature, the governor can only sign bills that have already passed with majority approval.
Given these facts, here are some other relevant questions.
Are people not focusing on her actual platform because there is nothing there that makes a case against her?
If they want you to vote for someone else, why aren't they making a case for their candidate?
Fear is a powerful motivator. Our political system relies on it too much. Don't let people trigger false fears to bypass your critical thinking.
Update: Below is some feedback I'm grateful to have recieved about errors in my post. I'll leave the post and feedback in original form.
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Unfortunately this has some errors in it. The DSA is not a party, it's an activist organization that she is a member of. That's why when our members run, they run on a party line because the party has ballot access. In most cases that's the Democratic Party line because in a forced two party system, the Dems are the closest to where most of the people who want to run sit. Many of our members are also dues paying members of the Democratic Party, like myself. Because again, the DSA is not a party, it's an activist organization.
We also don't require that all our members have perfect alignment with our platform. We're not like many other socialist organizations in which you must fall in line with a highly specific set of beliefs that people on top have decided on. We decide many things at the chapter by voting and members put items forward. As we are a democratic organization that believes deeply in the democratic process of voting and everyone getting a say, even something you really believe in or are excited by can be voted down for any number of reasons and similarly, people can vote in things that you might disagree with as an individual. We have caucuses within our org that all have various different priorities or views of how we should best most forward. We also have uncaucused membership. Every two years each chapter gets to send at least one member (increases proportionally) as a delegate to our national convention. At this convention we vote as a body of members on items we may want to add or remove from the platform, changes to our bylaws, and activist initiatives we want to take on for the next 2 years. So the majority of individuals do not directly vote on the platform of the organization at the national level and should not be held responsible for each individual item on it. Fran was never a delegate to my knowledge so has never had any direct say in platform and could disagree with any amount of it.
When our members want to run for office they have the opportunity to apply for our endorsement--still not a party, just an org no different than any other 501c4 that does endorsements across the political spectrum. Candidates who are running pick their entire platform. That's not voted on by the org. However if their platform is sufficiently different from our core values they would not get the endorsement in all likelihood. Hong DID apply for chapter level endorsements, including her home chapter of Madison. She's also endorsed by Milwaukees DSA chapter and North East Wisconsins DSA chapter. I think she might also have the endorsement of one other chapter by I'm unsure. The members home chapter has the opportunity to refer the individual to the national electoral committee for endorsement, however the Madison chapter chose not to do so at this time, so she's not eligible for national endorsement.
Source: I'm one of the cochairs for the North East Wisconsin chapter, and I happen to also sit on the national electoral committee.
Anyway, the heart of your post is still correct. Her platform is not the national DSA platform and we should all be focused on her platform and the specific things she's enumerated and not on the national DSA platform.