Hasan Piker Straight Up Tells CNN Its Harder For Progressives to Win Primaries Than the General Election

Screenshot via CNN

Highly controversial progressive streamer Hasan Piker told CNN he truly believes that Democratic Socialist candidates’ greatest challenge is winning Democratic Party primaries, not general elections.

Piker’s take flies in the face of conventional political wisdom that the more extreme candidates to emerge from primaries often benefit the other party in the general election.

CNN Senior Correspondent Donie O’Sullivan spoke to Piker for his special titled, “The Left Insurgency.”

“I think these guys have failed so publicly and so spectacularly that it has caused people to seek out alternatives,” Piker told O’Sullivan in a preview clip released ahead of the program’s Sunday debut.

“I see challenges from the, quote, ‘progressive left,’ unquote. And these people are too hard-headed to know that they’re not popular. People don’t like them. They don’t win elections. They never run against Republicans — they just run against other Democrats. And their only message is, ‘We’re gonna blow everything up,'” James Carville then says in a clip as O’Sullivan notes to Piker, “Carville says this is all going to implode at the general election.”

“Yeah, as opposed to previous neoliberal Democratic candidacies that have been spectacular successes so far — Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024. There are a lot of people who are just like, “This is not working.” The cost of living crisis is completely out of control. Democrats haven’t done anything about it. Republicans haven’t done anything about it. There has to be a different alternative,” Piker insists.

“I have one simple philosophy about politics: winning is everything, stupid. Let’s think of somebody — Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders ran for president twice, you know what he did twice, he lost by a lot,” Carville says in another added in the clip.

“Because for progressives, getting out of the primary is a far more difficult battle than winning in the general. This is our theory. The reason for that is because Republicans don’t have a vision for change. Socialists do,” Piker is then shown arguing.

Piker also raised eyebrows in the clips circulated ahead of the interview for claiming there is a “zero chance” that the 2028 Democratic Party presidential nominee will be pro-Israel.

Piker has long been a controversial figure on the left for his boosting of terror groups like Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, as well as for saying the U.S. “deserved” 9/11. In more recent months, Piker has toured China and Cuba while praising their autocratic Communist governments. While in China, Piker declared he had no patriotism for the U.S.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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