On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Boston Globe Senior Opinion Writer Kimberly Atkins Stohr argued that “we are seeing the results of what people were talking about” during the “woke 1.0” era and “Democrats have to build a big tent that focuses on all of the things that are happening as a result of the Trump administration, both economically and otherwise. And I think that’s what Democrats are trying to do at this point.”
Co-host William Brangham asked, “Kimberly, the Republicans clearly relished the idea of running against Hong, and now they don’t have that as a foil in this election. Again, do you think this is just pragmatism on their part, or, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), one of the more famous of the socialists, democratic socialists out there, recently said, the woke 1.0 era is over, and I’m glad for it?”
Atkins Stohr answered, “Yeah, so I think a couple things are at play here. I agree with you that candidates matter, and you have to have a good candidate running, and that will trump anything in a race. I also think that gubernatorial races are precise things, that you can’t always draw national implications out of them. A state like Massachusetts for many, many years had — blue as the sky, but loved to elect Republican governors, because they like those checks and balances. So, they do like different ideologies for different positions. I don’t think that you can extrapolate on congressional races, for example, there. But I also think, in terms of is woke 2.0 better than woke 1.0, I think what we are seeing and what voters are responding to are candidates that respond to the needs of the moment. 2020, there were different needs. We were in a pandemic. We were locked down. We were seeing police brutality right before us. We were seeing the Trump administration completely fall apart, and there was a different urgency there. Right now, the biggest urgency is economic. And you are seeing people who are excelling where they can make voters understand, look, I understand that affordability is an issue for you, that housing affordability, that gas prices are rising, and I want to get into office to work for you. That message seems to be just on fire at this moment, and it’s something that Republicans are having a really difficult time responding to.”
Later, she said that “we are seeing the results of what people were talking about then. We are seeing a workforce where the federal workforce was decimated, including black women disproportionately hit. You are seeing Republicans vilify trans people and LGBTQ people with zest and zeal. You are seeing DEI, whatever they call DEI, being eliminated in a way that even the president’s putting up signs on the Smithsonian saying that it’s a lie if it talks about the plight of black or brown Americans, which is factual. You’re seeing such a backlash against all of those things, which is, in part, because Democrats were walking away from it. I think Democrats have to build a big tent that focuses on all of the things that are happening as a result of the Trump administration, both economically and otherwise. And I think that’s what Democrats are trying to do at this point. They need a big tent. They need to make the big case to Americans that you can — if you want to keep with all of — everything that’s going on, keep voting Republican. If you want that to end, give someone else a shot.”
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