Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted political strategist James Carville for blaming the Democratic candidate’s loss in Virginia on progressives’ “stupid wokeness” — saying the term is fashionable among “older people.”
“Like the average audience for people seriously using the word ’woke’ in a 2021 political discussion are James Carville and Fox News pundits so that should tell you all you need to know,” the New York Democrat posted on Twitter.
She went on to blame Carville, who managed Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, for causing divisions among Democrats by using words like “woke.”
”And before people disingenuously complain ‘woke’ is denigrating to older people, it’s actually pundits like Carville using terms like ‘woke’ to insult voters under 45 that’s denigrating,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media.
“Don’t wonder why youth turnout falls when Dems talk about them like this. We need everyone,” she said.
Carville, known as the “Ragin’ Cajun,” was asked in an interview on “PBS NewsHour” about Republican Glenn Youngkin’s win over Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the governor’s race in Virginia — a state President Biden won by 10 percentage points only a year before.
“Well, what went wrong is this stupid wokeness,” Carville said. “Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey,” he added of the Garden State, where Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy barely eked out a second term.
“Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis. Even look at Seattle, Wash. I mean, this ‘Defund the police’ lunacy, this ‘Take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools,’ that — people see that,” he said, adding that progressives should check into a “woke detox center.”
Ocasio-Cortez also lashed out at ABC 13 News for misquoting her comments about McAuliffe in Virginia.
“How can news outlets even attribute words to me I didn’t say? I said there are limits to trying to mobilize a campaign with a 100% moderate strategy without mobilizing the base. Said nothing abt ’wokeness’ which is a term almost exclusively used by older people these days btw,” she said on Twitter.
The station added an editor’s note to its story: “The term ‘woke’ was put in single-quotes in the original headline to this story to point out a colloquialism, not an exact quote.”
Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the “Squad” voted against Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan that passed the House on Friday.
Along with AOC, Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Cori Bush of Missouri voted against the deal.
They demanded that the Senate vote on Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better social spending plan before the House would take up the bipartisan infrastructure deal, which passed the Senate in August.
That bill has been held up by moderate Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who object to some of its programs and its price tag.