But it can silence it.
It's best to apply the tape heavily.
Posted on 08/11/2026 6:55:05 AM PDT by MtnClimber
YOU CAN’T ERASE WOKE. This political season, like the last couple, has featured Democratic candidates not only running for office but running away from things they said from 2019 to 2021.
The latest is Francesca Hong, the somewhat loopy front-runner for the Democratic nomination for governor of Wisconsin. In the last few days, Hong has walked back her 2020 call to “cancel Thanksgiving” so the nation can “stop celebrating colonialism.” She has also backed off her 2019 and 2021 calls to “defund then abolish” the police. And she no longer stands by her 2021 call to “abolish the Senate,” which she made when she was angry that senators did not convict President Donald Trump in his second impeachment.
Hong spent the weekend before the primary shrugging off her not-so-old outrageous statements. “I had some hot takes, some bad takes on Twitter,” she told reporters. “But I’ve evolved, I’ve learned. I think it’s more dishonest not to learn.”
Hong did not address a more fundamental question: Isn’t it a problem that she ever believed those things? Hong was in her early 30s when she expressed the views listed above. Now approaching 40, she has been slow to back away from them, and only under pressure. Isn’t that a problem?
The progressive answer to that question came over the weekend from far-left superstar Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). “I have a local city councilman that has this saying: Woke 1 was crazy,” she said with a laugh on ABC News’s This Week Sunday. “And I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.”
That is what Ocasio-Cortez wants, and what Hong wants, and what lots of other socialists and progressives want, but it is fortunately not the way the political system works. Things a candidate has said in the past, especially in the recent past, mean something. They should face questions about them.
Graham Platner, who won the Democratic nomination for Senate in Maine, had a ton of social media posts to run away from. None of them forced him out of the race; that happened only after he was accused of sexual assault. In Michigan, Abdul el Sayed, or Abdulrahman Mohamed el Sayed, as Republicans call him, also had a lot of posts to live down — which he successfully did, winning the Democratic nomination for Senate.
Neither candidate faced a particularly adversarial press when it came to those old posts. They were running in Democratic primaries where there were less likely to be impassioned arguments about such views. For el Sayed, and for Hong if she wins, the situation will be different in the general election campaign, where they will be running against Republicans who will be more than happy to point out their statements from a few years ago.
Kamala Harris got to experience that in the 2024 presidential race. Remember that Harris ran for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. She was a terrible candidate and dropped out in December 2019. But she left a record of ridiculous comments that came back to haunt her in 2024.
“If there was a bad idea, she embraced it,” this newsletter noted earlier this year. “Green New Deal, Medicare for all, mandatory assault weapon buybacks, amnesty — the whole lot. (Harris also said she was ‘open’ to the idea of packing the Supreme Court.)”
Then there was the legendary moment in the 2024 presidential debate in which Trump accused Harris of “wanting to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” Some Harris supporters reacted with outrage — surely Trump was making up a crazy charge like that! But no, Trump was correct. Harris had actually made the pledge in writing in a 2019 questionnaire for the American Civil Liberties Union. Her views from five years earlier hurt her a lot in 2024.
Now, Ocasio-Cortez says the important thing is “to assess what a candidate is saying now.” But why not take what that candidate said just a few years ago into account? “I don’t love this idea that nothing anyone said or did in 2019-2020 counts,” tweeted left-leaning writer Matthew Yglesias. “Like it’s fine as a sociological observation, but I want political leaders who keep their heads even in the face of dumb fads.”
Francesca Hong did not do that. Abdul el Sayed did not do that. Kamala Harris did not do that. And woke was indeed crazy. So now, it’s entirely reasonable for voters to ask why those candidates believed it so fervently.
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In a breathtakingly self-serving statement, woke bartender Ocasio-Cortez
says the important thing is “to assess what a candidate is saying now.”
AOC and the Hong types are hoping against hope voter memories are as simplistic as they are.
Make a political ad of her saying stupid stuff on a loop.
AOC and Hong already know their voters are simplistic. They are just walking stuff back to shut us up.
When I’m king, anyone who purports to “walk back” a prior position will be publicly flogged. It’s such a mealy mouthed euphemism for lying, and implies that doing that is acceptable
Bkmk
It’s knee-jerk reactions to everything. That means no thinking involved.
1974. B-52’s arrived in Okinawa. Locals protested their arrival. There was a typhoon warning in Guam where they were stationed so they flew in until it blew over. Didn’t matter. The planes left after 2 days.
1986. Super Bowl-New Orleans. Bears QB Jim McMahon supposedly referred to the New Orleans women were sluts. He didn’t say it. Women still protested outside the team hotel.
Let’s just say these people are out there and always ready.
“AOC and the Hong types are hoping against hope voter memories are as simplistic as they are.”
In today’s America, their hopes will be reality.
lol
Some people just follow fads without thinking.
They are certainly going to try, and with the help of the press they will get some success out of this latest gaslight operation. It’s up to us to refuse their attempts of erasing it.
The Left never apologizes, never wishes to be held accountable. When criticized they cry racism, white supremacy,homophobia, patriarchal oppression whatever psychobabble to persude their neurotic, dumb supporters to continue to follow them. The Left should not be tolerated in any way by rational, decent people.
She is also mentally ill:
“Francesca Hong was diagnosed with 1) bipolar disorder 2) had a mental breakdown, 3) was placed in psychiatric hospitalization, 4) did self-harm by cutting, and 5) experienced a lithium overdose. My source: Francesca Hong in a 2023 interview. Her own words. She is running for Governor in Wisconsin (D).”
What’s amazing to me is that any American would vote for this idiot who is not only openly anti-American, but brags about it.
I mean, the left tries to hold right to every opinion they ever had, no matter what their opinions are today. Hold them to account.
It's best to apply the tape heavily.
Ocasio-Cortezs ays the important thing is “to assess what a candidate is saying now.”
The GOP would be crazy not to highlight the left’s insanity in their ads. “I love trans kids the most.”, “America deserved 9-11”, “Abolish the Senate”, “Thanksgiving should have been canceled in 1621”, “We’re living on stolen land”.
I have bipolar disorder also. A lot of good people have it. Winston Churchill is now thought to have had the milder bipolar type 2. It's not the end of a meaningful life. Many people thrive despite it.
I see no reason why someone with bipolar disorder, if it's being well managed and brought to heel, shouldn't be allowed to participate in politics, including running for office.
It's NOT the bipolar disorder that should dissuade anyone from voting for Francesca Hong. It is her ideology. The woman is full-bore anti-American. THAT is what worries me. She actually has a chance of winning and worse there are the legions of fools who believe that she is some kind of leading light.
This is going to go one of two ways. Either sanity prevails and the anti-American faction is soundly defeated. Or they prevail, and the American people will be forced to endure a hardship that if we are lucky, they will never forget it and forever swear off liberalism.
(I'm not that optimistic, to be honest.)
You can’t erase it. You have to BLAST it...
If they significantly change their stated views in five years, then what is the worth of their current statements.
We have seen it throughout history. Pseudo intellectuals with middling talent crave power and status but they can only gain it by exploiting the uninformed and using authoritarian movements.
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