New York’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is, after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the best-known democratic socialist in the United States, so, when she says “Woke 1 was crazy,” ears perk up.
Ocasio-Cortez’s comment seems to be part of a broader reassessment among many progressive politicians in the Democratic Party who are pulling back from some of their politically correct rhetoric that pleased a narrow group of activists and academics but was not selling among the vast majority of voters.
This summer, one democratic socialist candidate, Francesca Hong, apparently did not shed old views quickly enough. She lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. Both Hong and Crowley were equally progressive on the big issues, but Hong is the only one who carried the baggage of old social media posts in which she called for abolishing Thanksgiving and the police.
I am certain Ocasio-Cortez will be attacked by the fevered cultural warriors on the left for altering her views simply because she might run for president in 2028. If that is, indeed, her motivation, then I applaud her for being a smart politician. It may also be that she has simply grown up and put away childish things, like her past use of the phrase “menstruating people.”
Polls show that many progressive ideas are favored by growing majorities of voters; policies such as universal healthcare and reforming the economic system to favor the middle and working classes instead of billionaires and big corporations. Those economic issues are what Sanders has talked about day after day after day for years, and his consistency has made him the most successful democratic socialist in the history of American politics. What Sanders does not talk about is pronouns, gender fluidity, intersectionality, or precious terms like “Latinx.”
Ocasio-Cortez should keep following his lead. Progressives may be on the verge of gaining real political power if they do not blow their chance by getting sidelined with woke jargon and narrow cultural debates in which the MAGA crowd can too easily turn them into caricatures.
The risk is that, in those realms where “Woke 1” is still influential, if not dominant — college campuses, activist organizations and a few too many left-leaning journals, podcasts and cable news shows — progressive candidates could be undermined if they are expected to get nothing less than an A+ on ideological purity tests.
After the 2016 presidential election, I wrote a column making the argument that Bernie Sanders could have beaten Donald Trump in the general election because the Vermont senator drew support from a broad constituency that included plenty of people who were not ideological, either left or right, but were feeling left out by the elite establishment that, in their minds, was represented by Hillary Clinton. Too many of them made the mistake of thinking Trump was on their side. If they had been given another choice, history might have turned in a very different direction.
Whether I was right or wrong in that assessment, one thing is sure: That disaffected swath of voters has only grown in the decade since. A younger version of Bernie, whether AOC or someone else, just might be able to win their hearts and minds, if not in 2028, then in an election not too distant.
The zealots of Woke 1 should wake up to that opportunity.
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
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