2026-08-10T17:24:43.491Z / https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/10/politics/aoc-woke-democrats
民主党人非常想弄清楚如何为他们在2019年和2020年左右说过的一些极左翼言论找借口——那段时期常被称为“觉醒巅峰期”、“觉醒1.0版”或“觉醒1.0”。
卡玛拉·哈里斯在2024年总统竞选期间就曾为此头疼不已（想想她的一些跨性别政策言论），而如今这一问题正笼罩着几场关键的2026年选举。
周日，联邦众议员亚历山大·奥卡西奥-科特兹给出了一个解决方案：一笑了之。
“我认识的一位市议会成员有句话：‘觉醒1.0太疯狂了’，”这位纽约州女议员在美国广播公司《本周》节目中说完后笑了起来。
曾支持过“Defund the Police”（削减警方预算）运动的奥卡西奥-科特兹随后暗示，新冠疫情扩大了可接受的政治言论范围。但她表示，“如今我们不会再用那样的言论了。”
这对奥卡西奥-科特兹和她那类人来说可能是一种政治上灵巧的解释，但对整个政治体来说却是糟糕的。这延续了一个令人不安的趋势：主要政党政客要求美国人不要按字面意思理解他们所说的话——或者更具体地说，不要按字面意思理解他们曾经说过的话。
这正是诚实和问责制持续下滑的完美配方。
奥卡西奥-科特兹的话引自纽约市议员奇·奥塞。今年5月，有批评者翻出了他2021年的一条评论，他当时的回应很简单：“觉醒1.0太疯狂了。”
就在同一周，拜登政府前助手耶米西·埃格贝沃莱称赞得克萨斯州参议院候选人詹姆斯·塔拉里科与自己过去的觉醒言论划清界限。“觉醒巅峰期太离谱了。承认这一点没问题！”埃格贝沃莱说道。
而本周末，或许是2026年民主党候选人中“觉醒巅峰期”问题最严重的一位，也呼应了奥卡西奥-科特兹的说法。
弗兰西斯卡·洪是周二威斯康星州州长初选的热门候选人，但她过去关于废除警察、取消感恩节等言论，让许多民主党人对她获得提名感到担忧。
“我在推特上发过一些过激言论、糟糕言论，但当你是一名新冠疫情期间经营餐厅的企业主，还是一名要付账单的学生时，你只是在向世界抒发情绪，”洪在接受《政客》采访时表示，“但我已经成长了，我学到了很多。”
在《本周》节目中，共和党籍前新泽西州州长克里斯·克里斯蒂紧随奥卡西奥-科特兹之后登场，对她的解释提出了反驳。
“听了这位女议员的话，大家为什么还要信任她？”克里斯蒂说道。他补充称，共和党人会“将奥卡西奥-科特兹和洪这类人职业生涯中说过的话——而不是他们如今试图顺势转变的形象——作为评判标准”。
但平心而论，克里斯蒂在这个问题上并不是一个完美的说客。
他不仅多次改变对唐纳德·特朗普总统的立场，还基本承认自己曾为了政治权宜之计发表过关于特朗普的言论。
在全力反对特朗普并于2016年转而支持他之后，克里斯蒂解释道：“没错，我当时确实不同意唐纳德·特朗普。这太令人意外了。我当时在和他竞争……我当然不同意他的观点，因为我在和他竞选。”
后来，克里斯蒂在2021年与特朗普决裂后，这位新泽西州共和党人试图否认自己曾对特朗普的赞扬，称他当时判断特朗普会成为共和党总统候选人，只想顺势而为。
但远不止克里斯蒂一人。这已成为美国两党政治中的一种普遍现象。
已故的共和党参议员林赛·格雷厄姆曾多次表示，他转向支持特朗普是为了推动政策落地，而非出于本心。“如果你了解我，就会知道这么做并不寻常，”他曾说道。
副总统J·D·万斯在私人信息和公开言论中都将自己支持特朗普的立场归因于政治考量。2021年宣布竞选俄亥俄州参议员时，他告诉《时代》杂志：“如果我真的关心这些民众和我声称在意的事情，我就只能忍气吞声支持他。”
国务卿马可·卢比奥曾解释过自己2016年称特朗普为“骗子”的言论，称“2016年参选时我并不了解他，也不了解他这个人。”
2020年，哈里斯为自己攻击乔·拜登过去关于校车政策的言论辩解道：“那只是一场辩论。”当被问及这是否意味着她并非真心说出那些话时，哈里斯重复道：“那只是一场辩论”，并暗示在那种场合下，这类言论就是你该说的话。
近年来最突出的例子是特朗普多年来对真相的攻击——以及他的支持者为其辩护的行为。当被指出他有数万条虚假和误导性言论时，一些盟友反复敦促人们要“认真对待”特朗普的话，而非“按字面意思理解”。
这些言论的潜台词是，或许这些政客当时说那些话时并不是真心的——他们只是在说说而已。但随之而来的问题是：这是否也适用于他们如今所说的话？
“认真而非较真”的说法对特朗普来说极为有利，因为他可以事后决定哪些言论是认真的，哪些只是为了达到政治效果而说的。
但这种做法卸去了政客们作为公共利益谨慎管理者的责任——不再需要通过审慎审视议题来形成自己的立场这项艰苦工作。而且这几乎让问责制无从谈起。
一旦问责制被抛诸脑后，美国人不再要求问责，政客们就会倾向于说出他们认为当时最有利于自己的话。
在某种程度上，他们现在已经在这么做了。但将“五天前或五年前的言论可以被解释为来自另一个政治时刻的无关紧要的胡言乱语”这一逻辑正式化，听起来并不是个好主意。
更好的做法是奖励那些有远见和智慧，能够秉持真实信念并坚持立场——且能经受住时间政治考验的政客。
Democrats like AOC are trying to shrug off their ‘woke’ era. That’s bad for our politics
2026-08-10T17:24:43.491Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/10/politics/aoc-woke-democrats
Democrats would very much like to figure out how to explain away some of the far-left things they said circa 2019 and 2020 — a period often referred to as “peak woke,” “woke 1.0” or “woke 1.”
Kamala Harris struggled with this during her 2024 presidential campaign (think: some transgender policies), and now it looms over some key 2026 races.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday offered a prescription: Laugh it off.
“I have a local city councilman that has this saying: ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” the New York congresswoman said on ABC’s “This Week,” before laughing.
Ocasio-Cortez, who once supported defunding the police, went on to suggest Covid had expanded the range of acceptable political discourse. But she said that it’s “not rhetoric that we would use today.”
This might be a politically deft explanation for Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk. 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.
It’s a perfect recipe for a continued decline in honesty and accountability.
Ocasio-Cortez was quoting New York City Council Member Chi Ossé. Back in May, he responded to a critic who unearthed a 2021 comment of his by saying simply, “Woke 1 was crazyyyy.”
The same week, former Biden White House aide Yemisi Egbewole credited Texas Senate candidate James Talarico for distancing himself from his past woke comments. “Peak woke got weird. It’s okay to say that!” Egbewole said.
And this weekend, perhaps the one 2026 Democratic candidate with the biggest “peak woke” problem echoed Ocasio-Cortez’s comment.
Francesca Hong is the favorite in Tuesday’s Wisconsin gubernatorial primary, but her past statements about abolishing police and canceling Thanksgiving, among others, have a lot of Democrats freaked out about her potential nomination.
“I had some hot takes, some bad takes on Twitter, but when you’re a business owner running a restaurant during Covid, trying to pay bills as a student, you’re putting feelings out there into the world,” Hong told Politico. “But I’ve evolved, I’ve learned.”
Appearing after Ocasio-Cortez on “This Week,” Republican former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took exception to her explanation.
“After listening to the congresswoman, why should anyone trust her?” Christie said. He added that Republicans would “hold people like” Ocasio-Cortez and Hong “to what they’ve said over their careers, not what they’re trying to conveniently evolve into now.”
But Christie is, to put it lightly, an imperfect messenger on this.
Not only has he repeatedly changed his stance on President Donald Trump, but he has basically acknowledged having said things about Trump for political expediency.
After running hard against Trump and then embracing him in 2016, Christie explained: “Yes, I disagreed with Donald Trump at the time. Big shock. I was running against him. … Of course I disagreed with him, because I was running against him.”
Then, after Christie broke with Trump in 2021, the New Jersey Republican tried to disown the compliments he paid to Trump by saying he reasoned Trump would be the GOP nominee, and that he wanted to make the best of the situation.
But it’s hardly just Christie. This has become an epidemic in US politics, on both sides of the aisle.
The late GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham had repeatedly suggested his pro-Trump conversion was about getting things accomplished rather than what he truly believed. “If you know anything about me, it’d be odd not to do this,” he said at one point.
Vice President JD Vance in both private messages and public comments has cited political calculations for his Trump stances. He told Time magazine when launching his Ohio Senate campaign in 2021: “If I actually care about these people and the things I say I care about, I need to just suck it up and support him.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has explained comments like calling Trump a “con man” in 2016 by saying, “I didn’t know him when I ran in 2016, didn’t know him as a person.”
And in 2020, Harris explained her personal attacks on Joe Biden’s past position on busing by saying, “It was a debate.” When asked if that meant she didn’t mean what she said, Harris repeated, “It was a debate,” and suggested that those kinds of comments are what you say in that forum.
The most prominent example of this in recent years is Trump’s years-long assault on the truth — and his supporters defense of it. When confronted with his tens of thousands of false and misleading claims, some allies have repeatedly urged people to take Trump “seriously” rather than “literally.”
Implicit in these arguments is that maybe these politicians didn’t believe what they said in real time — that they were just saying stuff. But the question then becomes: Does that also apply to what they’re saying today?
Seriously-not-literally is a great set up for Trump because he can decide retroactively which comments he meant and what he was just saying for political effect.
But that arrangement removes the onus on politicians to be studied stewards of the public interest — to do the hard work of coming to their positions through a sober review of the issues. And it makes it virtually impossible to hold them accountable.
And once that accountability is out the window and Americans no longer demand it, politicians are liable to say whatever they think is most advantageous at the time.
That’s what they do now, to some extent. But formalizing a system where comments from five days or five years ago can be explained away as unimportant ramblings from another political moment feels like a bad idea.
It would be better to reward politicians who have the foresight and wisdom to take positions that they actually believe in and can stick to — and can stand the political test of time.
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