Democrats Try to Dodge ‘Woke 1’ Label
Democrats struggle to distance themselves from socialist primary winners' radical past positions as Rep.
The Democratic Party faces a deepening dilemma as socialist candidates who championed radical positions continue to sweep primary contests nationwide, even as party strategists acknowledge such extremism cost them dearly in 2024.
The challenge is stark: how can Democrats pivot toward the political centre—a standard election-year manoeuvre—whilst simultaneously embracing nominees whose policies on abolishing police departments, eliminating ICE, and funding sex-change operations for illegal immigrants with taxpayer money alienate moderate voters?
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has offered the party a new rhetorical escape route, dismissing past radicalism with a laugh and the phrase “Woke 1 was crazy,” as the Washington Examiner reports in a recent analysis.
During a Sunday appearance on ABC, Ocasio-Cortez was pressed by host Jonathan Karl on how Democrats can distance themselves from candidates such as Francesca Hong in Wisconsin, who advocated not only for abolishing police and prisons but also for ending the national Thanksgiving holiday.
The congresswoman’s response leaned on a saying from a local city councilman: “Woke 1 was crazy.” She argued that what matters now is assessing what candidates are saying in the present, rather than dwelling on past positions.
Yet this approach amounts to asking voters to ignore the reckless and juvenile policy positions Democrats championed just five years ago—positions now exposed as politically toxic—and focus instead on carefully calibrated election-year messaging.
Ocasio-Cortez attempted to contextualize the radicalism by pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic era, suggesting the crisis created a huge opening of the Overton window that led Democrats to entertain extreme policies in pursuit of solutions during lockdown.
The argument falters on multiple fronts. The “abolish the police” and “abolish ICE” movements preceded the pandemic. More fundamentally, the explanation concedes that during a period of national crisis and uncertainty, Democratic leaders abandoned sound judgment and pursued demonstrably terrible policies—hardly a confidence-building admission for voters evaluating their future governance.
Critically, the “Woke 1 was crazy” framing does not constitute an acknowledgment that these policies were substantively wrong. Instead, it retreads familiar Democratic complaints about messaging failures. Ocasio-Cortez continued by noting that rhetoric used during lockdown is not rhetoric Democrats would deploy today—a statement about communication strategy, not policy substance.
The phrase itself originates with Chi Osse, a New York City councilman and fellow member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Osse coined the expression to deflect scrutiny of his 2021 statement that “a cis white man should not be the next speaker of the Council.” He never repudiated the blatant racism or the elevation of identity politics over merit—he simply wished he had not said it publicly.
When Karl pressed Ocasio-Cortez on whether she supports the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America’s official platform calling for “police abolitionism” and to “abolish ICE’s police state,” the congresswoman replied in the negative but added, “I think that this is a free country.”
Indeed it is. Candidates remain free to affiliate with socialist organizations or decline to do so. Voters equally remain free to examine official policy platforms and question the judgment of those who endorse them.
“Woke 1 was crazy” functions as a dodge—a mechanism for dismissing yesterday’s rhetorical extremism without genuinely abandoning the underlying policy agenda. The phrase represents an attempt to navigate between political destruction and electoral viability without making substantive ideological concessions.
Voters should not be misled. If Democrats genuinely wish to move beyond what they now acknowledge as “Woke 1,” they must first honestly confront what made those positions indefensible—and then demonstrate authentic policy change, not merely refined messaging.
The party’s socialist wing continues winning primaries whilst promoting the very positions Democratic strategists privately admit proved disastrous in the last election cycle. Until Democrats resolve this fundamental contradiction with more than clever slogans, voters have every reason to question whether the party has learned anything at all.
With information from Washington Examiner
