The Democratic Party is in a bind. There is a general acknowledgment that voters this November and beyond might easily be put off by the radical policies of many Democratic candidates, such as abolishing the police, abolishing ICE, and paying for sex change operations for illegal immigrants with tax dollars. Such extremes and general weirdness certainly hurt Democrats at the ballot box in 2024.On the other hand, however, socialist candidates who fervently supported these positions are now winning Democratic primaries nationwide. So is the party to welcome them or repudiate its own nominees? How can the Democrats pretend to move toward the political center, as is customary, while embracing the radicalism that general election voters reject?
Enter Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and a new line with which she tries to steer between the Scylla and Charybdis of political destruction. Speaking Sunday, she brushed off some of the most extreme policies that she and others have supported by laughing and saying, “Woke 1 was crazy.”Asked by ABC’s Jonathan Karl to how Democrats get around the fact that candidates such as Francesca Hong in Wisconsin not only supported abolishing police and prisons, but also thought it a good idea to end the national Thanksgiving holiday, Ocasio-Cortez said, “I have a local city councilman who has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’ and I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.”This is a cop out. It is another way of saying don’t pay attention to the foolish things we said five years ago, which have since been exposed as reckless and juvenile, and just focus on what we want to talk about now that we are asking for your votes.It is an admission that voters can’t trust your judgment. “Well, you know, I think … that during this time and during … especially during COVID, there was a huge opening of the Overton window,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We were shut down. And I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place.”Leaving aside the fact that the abolish the police and the abolish ICE movements began before COVID, this amounts to conceding that, in a time of great stress and uncertainty, Democratic leaders lost their minds and pursued truly horrible policies. How is that supposed to make voters feel better about trusting their judgment now?More importantly, “Woke 1 was crazy” isn’t an admission that Democrats got anything wrong. Instead, it is a rehash of the vacuous lament that they got their messaging wrong. “I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today,” Ocasio-Cortez went on to say. So when Democrats say, “Woke 1 was crazy,” they aren’t even acknowledging that the crazy policies they pushed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic were wrong and bad, they just failed to explain them to voters as creatively as they should have. We can see this in the origin of the phrase, which Ocasio-Cortez finds so useful. The city councilman she alludes to is Chi Osse, a fellow member of the Democratic Socialists of America, who came up with “Woke 1 was crazy” to deflect questions about his 2021 statement that “a cis white man should not be the next speaker of the Council.”Osse did not repudiate his blatant racism or his sacrifice of merit on the altar of faddish sexual politics. All he is doing is expressing the wish that he had not voiced his offensive ideas out loud.Ocasio-Cortez admitted on ABC News the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which she is a member, still calls in its platform for “police abolitionism” and to “abolish ICE’s police state.” Asked by Karl, “Are those positions you support?” Ocasio-Cortez responded, “No, but I think that this is a free country.”IN DEFENSE OF AIPACThis is a free country. Candidates are free to join the socialist party or not. Voters are free to look at official policy positions and question the judgment of candidates who support them.“Woke 1 was crazy” is a dodge, a way to dismiss yesterday’s rhetorical extremism lightly while not actually abandoning the policies it expressed. Voters should not be fooled. If Democrats want credit for moving past Woke 1, they first have to admit what was crazy about it — and then actually change.
