Democrats like AOC are trying to shrug off their ‘woke’ era. That’s bad for our politics
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/10/politics/aoc-woke-democrats
EXCERPTS: Democrats would very much like to figure out how to explain away some of the far-left things they said circa 2019 and 2020 — a period often referred to as “peak woke,” “woke 1.0” or “woke 1.”
[...] Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday offered a prescription: Laugh it off. “I have a local city councilman that has this saying: ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” the New York congresswoman said on ABC’s “This Week,” before laughing. ... she said that it’s “not rhetoric that we would use today.”
This might be a politically deft explanation for Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk. But it’s a bad one for the body politic. It continues a troubling trend of major politicians asking Americans not to take the things they say — or more specifically, that they once said — at face value. It’s a perfect recipe for a continued decline in honesty and accountability.
[...] The same week, former Biden White House aide Yemisi Egbewole credited Texas Senate candidate James Talarico for distancing himself from his past woke comments. “Peak woke got weird. It’s okay to say that!” Egbewole said.
And this weekend, perhaps the one 2026 Democratic candidate with the biggest “peak woke” problem echoed Ocasio-Cortez’s comment.
Francesca Hong is the favorite in Tuesday’s Wisconsin gubernatorial primary, but her past statements about abolishing police and canceling Thanksgiving, among others, have a lot of Democrats freaked out about her potential nomination... (MORE - details)
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While most of that stuff and far more radical material actually is espoused somewhere in DSA literature (and the Red Star Caucus sub-unit especially) -- and that's also why the above are receiving criticism for their comments from those who do take "Woke 1" seriously... It was Trump who introduced the trend of openly making extreme declarations.
Prior to the 2016 election, Trump repeatedly made asinine (but calculated) statements to provoke moral responses from Hillary Clinton. So that when the working class turned on the evening news, what they saw was constant clips of Hillary nobly defending LGBT+, unauthorized migrants, Muslims, etc. To the exclusion of anything addressing the concerns in "flyover country". (Not that she didn't speak to the latter, but those Zzzz items were not the kind of video-audio bites that networks wanted to harvest and highlight.)
During 2024, a similar strategy applied to Kamala Harris, but there was also other fertile territory to tap. And that time Trump handed most of the surgical work over to others in his campaign (that Musk was a big part of).
The priority and zeal that the Democratic Party gives to maintaining its image of being the "ethical organization" of the two can border almost on blind arrogance at times. In the sense of it biting so often on Trump and GOP bait like that in the past. One hurdle might be that it's difficult to acknowledge that such inferior "bastards, fascists" have manipulative subtlety to their blatant overtures. Improving discipline in not reacting self-righteously to every Trump/GOP bizz and fizz cannot be much improved if that is not discerned, admitted, and circulated.
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https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/10/politics/aoc-woke-democrats
EXCERPTS: Democrats would very much like to figure out how to explain away some of the far-left things they said circa 2019 and 2020 — a period often referred to as “peak woke,” “woke 1.0” or “woke 1.”
[...] Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday offered a prescription: Laugh it off. “I have a local city councilman that has this saying: ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” the New York congresswoman said on ABC’s “This Week,” before laughing. ... she said that it’s “not rhetoric that we would use today.”
This might be a politically deft explanation for Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk. But it’s a bad one for the body politic. It continues a troubling trend of major politicians asking Americans not to take the things they say — or more specifically, that they once said — at face value. It’s a perfect recipe for a continued decline in honesty and accountability.
[...] The same week, former Biden White House aide Yemisi Egbewole credited Texas Senate candidate James Talarico for distancing himself from his past woke comments. “Peak woke got weird. It’s okay to say that!” Egbewole said.
And this weekend, perhaps the one 2026 Democratic candidate with the biggest “peak woke” problem echoed Ocasio-Cortez’s comment.
Francesca Hong is the favorite in Tuesday’s Wisconsin gubernatorial primary, but her past statements about abolishing police and canceling Thanksgiving, among others, have a lot of Democrats freaked out about her potential nomination... (MORE - details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
While most of that stuff and far more radical material actually is espoused somewhere in DSA literature (and the Red Star Caucus sub-unit especially) -- and that's also why the above are receiving criticism for their comments from those who do take "Woke 1" seriously... It was Trump who introduced the trend of openly making extreme declarations.
Prior to the 2016 election, Trump repeatedly made asinine (but calculated) statements to provoke moral responses from Hillary Clinton. So that when the working class turned on the evening news, what they saw was constant clips of Hillary nobly defending LGBT+, unauthorized migrants, Muslims, etc. To the exclusion of anything addressing the concerns in "flyover country". (Not that she didn't speak to the latter, but those Zzzz items were not the kind of video-audio bites that networks wanted to harvest and highlight.)
During 2024, a similar strategy applied to Kamala Harris, but there was also other fertile territory to tap. And that time Trump handed most of the surgical work over to others in his campaign (that Musk was a big part of).
The priority and zeal that the Democratic Party gives to maintaining its image of being the "ethical organization" of the two can border almost on blind arrogance at times. In the sense of it biting so often on Trump and GOP bait like that in the past. One hurdle might be that it's difficult to acknowledge that such inferior "bastards, fascists" have manipulative subtlety to their blatant overtures. Improving discipline in not reacting self-righteously to every Trump/GOP bizz and fizz cannot be much improved if that is not discerned, admitted, and circulated.
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