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If you missed Jasmine's Triad last week, go back and give it a read. It's so good.

Her thesis is that while "woke" eventually grew into an amorphous oppressive blob-if you like Thanksgiving or don't like bike lanes, then you are read out of the movement!-the original ideas behind "staying woke" are pretty valuable. And also turned out to be . . . right. Here's Jasmine:

Maybe at this point you're thinking I'm making a True Woke has never been tried! argument.

Not quite. My point is that "wokeness"-in an idealized form-is an argument for guardrails against unrestrained domination by the most powerful forces in society. It was in the calls for an end to extrajudicial police killings. It was in the demands for accountability when influential figures parroted harmful racist remarks. It was in the warnings of how easily civil protections for vulnerable groups-trans people or noncitizen immigrants or pregnant women-could be trampled upon.

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The reason I'm picking apart the polling is because between Hong in Wisconsin and El-Sayed in Michigan, we're going to get a narrative about how DSA-branded Democrats always underperform.

And the reality is more complicated than that.

El-Sayed isn't actually a DSA Democrat. He's a normal Democrat who, for various reasons, codes as DSA-adjacent. Yet he underperformed much more than Hong. El-Sayed's polling average had him up by 13; he won by a point.

Francesca Hong is a real-deal DSA-er and she finished within the margin of error of where the polls had her.

So, at the broadest possible level, a narrative saying DSA Dems underperform their polls isn't right.

But there is a lesson in here and it seems important.

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The eternal lesson is that African-American voters are the backbone of the Democratic coalition. And African-American voters seem to be less interested in DSA-forward candidates than most other parts of the coalition.

Maybe that will change! But until it does, we should keep in mind that to succeed in Democratic primaries, candidates need to do well with African-American voters.

Black voters represent the dead-center of the party.