{"id":38963,"date":"2026-08-11T17:21:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T12:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=38963"},"modified":"2026-08-11T17:21:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T12:21:35","slug":"why-aoc-and-other-progressives-are-backing-off-woke-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=38963","title":{"rendered":"Why AOC and other progressives are backing off \u201cWoke 1\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"zephr-anchor\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I\u2019ll be writing about two things: <strong>one big idea<\/strong> or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and <strong>one thing I\u2019m hearing<\/strong> from a voice on the ground. Let\u2019s get into it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p><h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\"><strong>One big idea:<\/strong> <strong>Lessons from \u201cWoke 1\u201d <\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Earlier this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) flashed her political dexterity on ABC\u2019s <em>This Week<\/em> when she was asked about the policies of Peak Woke \u2014 call it Woke 1, that stretch around the 2020 pandemic when the American liberal machine seemed to be at its political and cultural height. \u201cI have a local city councilman who has this saying,\u201d the Bronx congresswoman <a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.com\/Politics\/ocasio-cortez-generational-tidal-wave-millennial-voters-reshaping\/story?id=135496651\">said<\/a>. \u201cWoke 1 was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">She was quoting a tweet from Chi Oss\u00e9, a New York City Council member from Brooklyn, but the point underneath it was the real tell. The Democrats\u2019 emerging left \u2014 fresh off primary victories in New York, Colorado, and now Michigan \u2014 has developed a playbook for handling any unpopular stance, or tweet, from the early 2020s, whether it\u2019s pandemic masking, defunding the police, or the broader vocabulary of that summer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The new plan: Brush it off. Then refocus on the present, and on the policies that will actually make people\u2019s lives better.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">So far, the strategy is working. Zohran Mamdani walked back his support for defunding the police during his 2025 mayoral campaign and is now the mayor of New York. Darializa Avila Chevalier, the DSA-backed congressional candidate in New York\u2019s 13th District, had a stack of deleted posts that CNN\u2019s KFile <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/06\/01\/politics\/kfile-ny-13-darializa-avila-chevalier-deleted-tweets-defund-abolish-police-prisons-deportations\">resurfaced this June<\/a> \u2014 including one that read \u201call deportations are wrong.\u201d When I asked her about them, she didn\u2019t disavow a word. She won her primary, albeit in a deep-blue district, anyway. Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong had a bad case of the woke mind virus in 2020 \u2014 the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/498368\/francesca-hong-cancel-thanksgiving-abolish-police-prisons\">\u201ccancel Thanksgiving\u201d<\/a> kind \u2014 and she\u2019s still in the hunt in this week\u2019s Democratic primary, where her candidacy has been far more focused on issues like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/495808\/francesca-hong-socialist-platform-policies-wisconsin\">data centers and education funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Electorally, at least, Oss\u00e9 has been proven right. The pandemic was wild, and primary voters seem to be extending progressives a grace period of sorts \u2014 a chance to reintroduce themselves after workshopping their ideas over the last five years. And while Republicans are still hopeful they can relitigate some of these fights in a general election, they\u2019ve <a href=\"https:\/\/19thnews.org\/2025\/11\/election-2025-democrats-winning-trans-protections\/\">struggled to make them stick in high-profile races since 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">But these are also the issues \u2014 race, gender, sexuality, affirmative action, religion, cancel culture \u2014 where the simplest story gets repeated out of ease. The national media\u2019s distance from everyday people, and especially from working-class people of color, is felt most in how it covers culture. Catch-all terms like \u201cwokeness\u201d flatten real differences across the electorate and quietly impose a conservative frame on genuine arguments about equity and inclusion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">That was one of my biggest takeaways from that 2020 summer: our collective discomfort with all of these issues in the first place. I watched that year up close, traveling with Democratic and Republican candidates through the pandemic and the racial-justice protests, and there was never a clean \u201cTwo Americas\u201d moment \u2014 at least not the left-versus-right one everyone expected. The real gap was between Masked America \u2014 coastal, professional, absolutely consumed by identity politics \u2014 and everyone else. Among ordinary voters of all parties, and especially minority voters, there was significantly more skepticism from the start toward the highly-specific \u201cwoke 1\u201d litmus tests now being renounced by their leading proponents. At <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/12\/us\/politics\/george-floyd-racial-justice.html\">George Floyd\u2019s memorial in Houston<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/09\/26\/us\/politics\/minneapolis-defund-police.html\">in the city where he died<\/a>, there was no consensus on defunding the police, only a shared agreement about racial injustice and a deep distrust of institutions. In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/08\/11\/us\/politics\/black-lives-matter-chicago-roseland.html\">south Chicago<\/a>, people were already skeptical that the sudden flood of corporate money into racial justice would outlast the moment \u2014 even while the checks were still being written.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">So no, I don\u2019t love the tidy language of Woke 1 (then) versus Woke 2 (now). But here are a few lessons from that summer \u2014 and from our recent reporting on <em>America, Actually<\/em> \u2014 that I think apply now, especially to the progressives stepping back from things they used to say.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The broad ideals \u2014 diversity, equity, a basic sense of fairness \u2014 still matter to Democratic voters. Criminal justice reform still has real purchase with the base. Minority and women candidates have kept winning since 2024, and even ideas like reparations <a href=\"https:\/\/marylandmatters.org\/2025\/12\/16\/legislature-overrides-moores-veto-approves-creation-of-reparations-commission\/\">still resonate<\/a> with big chunks of the Democratic electorate. What\u2019s changed isn\u2019t who these candidates are \u2014 it\u2019s what they choose to lead with.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">What <em>has<\/em> fallen out of favor is a way of talking. Let\u2019s say it\u2019s the nonprofit register, or the Ford Foundation cadence \u2014 the language that lived in mission statements and land acknowledgments, or that made sweeping generalizations about a specific group \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/19thnews.org\/2020\/06\/are-white-women-finally-waking-up\/\">white women<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/OsseChi\/status\/2057879171108376970\">cis men<\/a>, you name it. David Axelrod, describing Wisconsin\u2019s Francesca Hong, gave it this label: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/politics\/wisconsin-progressive-hits-back-at-david-axelrod-calling-her-unelectable-faculty-lounge-exotica\/\">a \u201cfont of zany liberal, faculty lounge exotica.\u201d<\/a> Yes, that\u2019s the part that\u2019s gotten less popular. The vocabulary changed more than the values.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p><h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">2. The left rewrote its message after 2024<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The clearest change is the affordability pivot. When Abdul El-Sayed ran for Michigan governor in 2018, the animating cause was climate and a Green New Deal. Today the center of gravity has moved to economic populism, affordability, and a rethinking of the US relationship with Israel. Climate didn\u2019t vanish, but it\u2019s no longer the headline. And \u201crepresentation\u201d was, at its core, a white-collar frame \u2014 it spoke loudest to people already inside the room.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Affordability speaks to everyone. When I sat down with El-Sayed on the show, this is how he described what Michigan voters were actually asking:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<blockquote class=\"duet--article--blockquote _4s58nu0 pn04iq9\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _4s58nu8 pn04iq1\">\u201cWho poses the biggest pushback to a system of politics that has been bought off in ways that leave me unable to afford my groceries, unable to afford a home, unable to look at my kid\u2019s school and believe that that\u2019s a good place for them, unable to get healthcare when I need it \u2014 and then sending my money abroad, telling me that somehow that\u2019s in my best interest?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">That\u2019s not the language of 2020. It\u2019s economic, universal, and it doesn\u2019t ask anyone to first pass a vocabulary test.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">It helps to remember that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was never really \u201cwoke.\u201d He talked about class more than culture, the many against the money. And it repeatedly got him into trouble, leading him to adopt more of the left\u2019s rhetoric and positions on identity and race after 2016. In 2028, the sweet spot is probably the middle, and that\u2019s what the next generation of progressives \u2014 AOC, Mamdani, El-Sayed \u2014 can do better than their Burlington forefather. They\u2019re fluent in blending the class critique and the social one without missing a beat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">\u201cThis is about the many versus the money,\u201d El-Sayed told me. \u201cIf you support a politics of the UAW, of working people everywhere, of teachers, of nurses, of working families, of Bernie Sanders and AOC, of people who want to break the chokehold of corporations and special interests on our politics \u2014 this is that race.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p><h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">3. Democratic voters have changed<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Progressives never had enough power to implement their most controversial ideas en masse (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/09\/26\/us\/politics\/minneapolis-defund-police.html?eafs_enabled=false\">the Minneapolis City Council was backtracking<\/a> off \u201cdefunding the police\u201d by the summer of 2021). Instead, \u201cwoke,\u201d as a cultural phenomenon, took its deepest hold in liberal and academic circles. So the corporate whiplash that followed \u2014 the rush to embrace new HR trainings, new DEI policies, and new vocabulary in 2020 and the quiet discarding of it a couple of years later \u2014 was felt most acutely by college-educated progressives themselves, and not by the more working-class voters cable news often invokes as most alienated by this period.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I think this speaks to Oss\u00e9\u2019s tweet, and why the grace period is real. And I think we can\u2019t underrate how many voters have been on a similar journey since 2020 \u2014 being genuinely shocked by the video of George Floyd\u2019s murder, agreeing in large part with the ideals of progressive activists, and maybe coming to disagree on the specifics in hindsight. In some ways, it reminds me of the way MAGA voters heard out now-Vice President JD Vance\u2019s journey from Trump critic to Trump loyalist. The audience is willing to believe the candidate\u2019s evolution because they\u2019ve been on a similar one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I think part of the reason \u201cWoke 1\u201d had a short shelf life was that it was based on a rigid framework of race and identity that has already been proven outdated. The binary that has guided most political discourse about race in the Democratic Party \u2014 with Black people on one side and white people on the other \u2014 is more outdated every election cycle. The emergence of Latino, Asian, and Arab swing voters has created coalitions for candidates beyond the Democrats\u2019 traditional base.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Diversity, equity, and inclusion already mean something different than in 2020, and that\u2019s what the next Democratic presidential primary will sort out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p><h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">4. The establishment\u2019s credibility collapse is the bigger story<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">But, of course, the reaction to Donald Trump\u2019s first presidency is different than the reaction to the second one. There have been material changes to the country, and voters aren\u2019t weighing progressives against some pristine center. They\u2019re weighing them against an establishment they believe has lied to them and fumbled the things that mattered, from inflation and immigration in Joe Biden\u2019s presidency to his decision to run for reelection.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">That was the theme of my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/podcasts\/496717\/clyburn-gerontocracy-primaries-voters\">recent interview<\/a> with Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC). Asked what the party should learn from 2024, he pointed the finger at Black voters \u2014 arguing Vice President Kamala Harris would have won if turnout had been higher. And while I appreciated the congressman\u2019s candor, that sentiment \u2014 pervasive among moderate Democrats right now \u2014 is exactly why the establishment is in the predicament it\u2019s in. Yes, there are real policy fights, over corporate PAC money and Medicare-for-all. But voters are also rejecting an insular way of doing politics, one built in the pre-Trump era, that refuses to account for its own failures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The Democratic Party leadership is on the defensive, and handwringing about \u201cwoke\u201d \u2014 and its so-called excesses \u2014 is fighting the last war. It\u2019s what helped Trump get elected in 2024. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to win elections in 2026 or 2028.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Also, I think most people have moved on. The scope of Trump\u2019s actions in his second term are so severe, and the backlash to anything \u201cDEI\u201d adjacent is so total, that the mild annoyance of Peak Woke seems tame in comparison.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">With the Wisconsin primary today, I talked with Sachin Chheda, a progressive strategist in Wisconsin who works on Democratic elections for issues and candidates. He oversaw winning campaigns for Wisconsin\u2019s all-important elections in the state Supreme Court. He is the principal at Earthrise Strategies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\"><strong>Is the expectation at this point that Francesca Hong is going to win?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I think that\u2019s the most likely scenario, but politics in Wisconsin is like the weather, and you can see big swings in a very short period of time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\"><strong>The contours of this race have sort of been confounding, starting with Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, and then the collapse of Mandela Barnes. Should we see this race as Hong winning? Or the Dem establishment failing to organize itself?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">I think it\u2019s two things.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">First of all, the other candidates, who run the gamut from farther left to close to centrist, all underestimated Fran.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">She really hit on where the electorate is \u2014 especially on Gaza and data centers. Gaza isn\u2019t a central issue of this campaign, but it\u2019s a signal, and just like Joe Biden, most of the other candidates missed it, while her supporters centered it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">And she just has her finger on the pulse of the electorate on data centers, while most of the other candidates were more focused on navigating the building trades politics. Again, not the central issue for most voters \u2014 but being the lone candidate against data centers sent a signal and allowed her to differentiate herself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The other thing is the \u201calternative-to-Fran\u201d candidates didn\u2019t coalesce \u2014 the opposite of what happened with Biden in South Carolina. There\u2019s some real differences among the candidates, there\u2019s some real ill-feeling and animosity and history among them, and there\u2019s real resentment of Gov. [Tony] <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/496353\/wisconsin-governor-chaos-hong-crowley-rodriguez-barnes\">Evers\u2019s late power move<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\"><strong>Is there any risk Wisconsin Democrats have an issue uniting ahead of November? <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Competitive primaries are always tough on the candidates, on activists, on volunteers\u2026and fun for pundits!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">But I have no doubt that whomever wins, Wednesday in Wisconsin will be just like Michigan last week \u2014 where a close race still ended in a quick endorsement and a very public show of unity among the candidates.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">All of the Democrats support lowering the cost of healthcare and childcare, funding public schools, taxing the rich, building more housing, putting guardrails on data centers, protecting civil rights, blocking ICE from kidnapping Wisconsinites, and stopping the corruption of the Trump administration and the MAGA agenda. They of course differ on many of the details, and that\u2019s why we have the primary election. There will always be some folks at the margins who don\u2019t get on the train, but 99% of Democrats will support the nominee and oppose far-right extremist MAGA goofball Tom Tiffany.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I\u2019ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I\u2019m hearing from a voice on the ground. Let\u2019s get into it. One big idea: Lessons from \u201cWoke 1\u201d Earlier this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) flashed&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/06\/gettyimages-2209976804.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C11.314295701335%2C100%2C77.37140859733&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}