Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

AOC: ‘Woke’ Movement May Have Gone Too Far

‘Woke 1 was crazy,’ says progressive congresswoman, quoting a political friend

By John Johnson withNewser.AI

Posted Aug 12, 2026 8:22 AM CDT

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is trying to draw a line between today’s left and its pandemic-era “woke” politics. In an appearance on ABC’s This Week over the weekend, the New York City congresswoman said controversial positions embraced around 2020—defunding the police, for example— were “a product of the time.” She quoted a political acquaintance as saying, “Woke 1 was crazy,” before laughing. Voters, she argued, should judge candidates on what they’re running on now. The comments continue to resonate:

• big attempt: AOC “is trying to pull off a political feat for the ages: bury a chapter of left-wing politics that seemed like a good idea to many liberals at the time—but not so much anymore,” writes Mike Zapler at Axios. The “ultimate test” of whether she can do so might come in 2028 if she runs for Senate or president.
• A critique: In the Atlantic, Idrees Kahool provides a critical take headlined, “The Democrats Can’t Just Laugh Off ‘Woke 1.'” One big problem is that Republicans will not let voters forget, writes Kahool, as Kamala Harris learned in the 2024 race when her 2020-era positions such as decriminalizing border crossings came back to haunt her.
• Critique, II: At CNN, Aaron Blake also dislikes AOC’s new stance. “This might be a politically deft explanation for Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk,” he writes. “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.”
• New progressives: Matt Bennett of the centrist Democratic group Third Way calls AOC savvy for recognizing “that positions she and others took on police in 2020 were bad substantively, and really bad politically.” But, he adds to Axios, “The problem is that some people running now are running on ideas that are even worse.” The reference is to the rise of the party’s left flank and self-described democratic socialist candidates. (A prominent one lost a gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin on Tuesday.)
• A defense of woke: But at the New Republic, Perry Bacon writes that the first woke movement did a lot of good in the country and objects to AOC trying to dismiss it as a “fever dream,” adding: “Woke 1.0 had its successes and failures, just as the congresswoman did in her earlier days on Capitol Hill. She wasn’t crazy then, and neither were the activists who were trying to change America, then and now.”