Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went viral after acknowledging that the early political version of “woke” became “crazy,” while appearing to make light of some of the more radical positions she once held.
However, former Democratic fundraiser Evan Barker believes Ocasio-Cortez will eventually have to explain why she supported policies associated with the “woke” movement—positions that alienated working-class Democrats and helped push some of them toward President Donald Trump—particularly if she hopes to seek the presidency.
Barker, author of the New York Times bestseller Nothing Left: Confessions Of A Democratic Operative, discussed Ocasio-Cortez in an interview with Our News Outlet about the Democratic Party’s future.
“You can’t just, like, hand-wave it away and laugh about it without actually explaining how your views have evolved,” Barker said of Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez has publicly supported defunding the police, decriminalizing border crossings, abolishing ICE and releasing incarcerated prisoners. She has also backed the view that systemic racism is real and used inclusive terms such as “menstruating persons” and “Latinx” in place of more traditional language.
Barker said Ocasio-Cortez’s dismissive treatment of her past rhetoric made her appear disingenuous.
“She knows that a lot of these things are now viewed as insane and lacking common sense, but she’s not actually explaining which views she once held that were crazy or how those views have changed,” Barker said.
Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became known for proposing sweeping spending plans, including the Green New Deal, to reshape the American economy and address climate change.
Lifelong Democratic activist Evan Barker said she was “thrilled” to attend the DNC in Chicago before becoming “devastated” after seeing the party’s operation from the inside.
Barker, who now identifies as an independent, spent five years raising as much as $50 million for progressive and Democratic candidates. She ultimately left the party and voted for President Donald Trump in 2024.
She later posted a TikTok video that went viral after criticizing the Democratic National Convention for failing to address issues she said mattered to working-class families.
She told Our News Outlet that she did not regret her vote for Trump in 2024, but that she was disappointed by the trajectory of his second term as president.
But she was more disturbed by Democrats for failing to correct course after losing again to Trump in 2024.
Barker said that Democratic candidates hoped voters would just forget about their woke positions without addressing why they took them in the first place and why they had evolved.
‘I think Democrats are trying to pivot, and they’re not pivoting by addressing or actually changing their social policies or culture views,’ she said. ‘They’re just pivoting by going harder into economics but you can’t pair lefty economics with super lefty social views. They’re just incompatible.’
‘FDR wasn’t woke,’ she added.
Since writing her book, Barker said she had heard from several disillusioned Democrats and Independents, but also many more welcoming messages from Republicans.
But she expressed disappointment that the party was unwilling to engage with her advice to them in her book.
Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ocasio-Cortez at a rally in Michigan
Ocasio-Cortez tried to laugh off her more radical positions as ‘crazy’ as a result of the coronavirus pandemic
‘People want to talk about the economy, people want to talk about gas prices. Yeah, that’s true, but at the same time, like, Republicans aren’t going to let you forget that you had these crazy views,’ she said.
That would likely lead to more political losses, as working-class Democrats were still looking for a leader who could put the party back on track with issues they cared about.
‘I think that they think that they’re winning right now, and so they don’t want to address a lot of the underlying issues that cause them to lose, and that’s been unfortunate,’ she said.
Barker said that her working class mother helped her understand the political moment, after she said she would likely vote Republican even though she was not necessarily thrilled with Trump’s second term.
‘She said to me, ‘Listen, my financial situation doesn’t really change that much if a Democrat or Republican is president, but at least the Republican Party has my values,’ she recalled.
