by Michael Barone, FrontPage Mag:
“‘Woke 1′ was crazy.” So said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on ABC News’ “This Week” earlier this month.
She said she was quoting New York City Councilman Chi Osse, whom The New York Times characterizes as “far left.” This was where Ocasio-Cortez seemed to be located on the ideological spectrum after her surprise defeat of House Democratic leadership member Joseph Crowley in the 2018 Democratic primary.
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At that time, she was a 28-year-old former waitress and organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign. Today, a decade later, she’s a nationally known figure often mentioned as a presidential candidate. In polls for the 2028 nomination, she ranks fourth in the RealClearPolitics average, behind 2024 nominee and former Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Polymarket places that her odds at winning are better than any of theirs.
As a possible national candidate, Ocasio-Cortez obviously has a motive to brush aside, as she did with a charmingly self-deprecatory laugh, the exotic positions she and other Democrats took on issues, particularly after the death of George Floyd in May 2020 and the ensuing multicity violent rioting.
They included demands to “defund the police” or even abolish police departments, to step up the already institutionalized demands for “diversity, equity and inclusion” hiring, and promotions in bureaucracies, public and private, for racial reparations. These weren’t just words: Cities such as New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Minneapolis did hustle to partially defund their police departments.
The Floyd riots and calls for defunding police were immediately followed by a sharp spike upward in violent crime. Liberals have characterized that spike as a response to COVID-19, but charts compiled by writer Steve Sailer make it clear that the spike began not with the lockdowns but with the riots and Woke 1 depolicing.
At the same time, the lockdowns, enforced with Woke 1 censoriousness, were causing not just economic damage but also long-lasting harm to children who were kept out of teacher union-run schools long after it was clear children were not vectors of the virus. And Woke 1 transgender demands, for biological men on women’s sports teams and public financing of even pre-adults’ gender transition surgery, were advanced by the Biden administration and endorsed by Harris.
Now there are numerous signs that the nation is putting Woke 1 so far in the rearview mirror as to be invisible and has little appetite for Woke 2. Items include:
— The lack of visible vehement protests at the elimination of DEI programs, racial quotas and preferences, in federal regulations, in many state and local governments, and even in their strongholds in the universities. You hear grumbling about the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, but nothing like the politically charged attacks on its 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade. There’s covert opposition and attempts to retain DEI under different labels, but you don’t hear Democratic candidates talking about the issue.
