The Wages of Wokeness

James Carville, the man who gave America Bill Clinton, didn’t engineer two victories in national elections by being stupid.

Speaking about Tuesday’s disastrous election results for Democrats, he told PBS’s Judy Woodruff, “What went wrong is this stupid wokeness. Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey. 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.”

Catering to the whims of the woke mob may bring some Democratic politicians fame and fortune. A good example is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; what do you think she’d be doing if she weren’t in Congress?

The wages of wokeness can be substantial, as long as the rest of America allows the delusions and separations from reality to last. But eventually, the woke mob goes too far and America—a nation that has indulged many dreamers and schemers—puts a stop to the nonsense and demands a return to reality.

Politico:

“What happened in Virginia and New Jersey is a warning sign for what will happen in every statewide election, either U.S. Senate or any statewide office, because the only way you win statewide in a red or purple state is by getting at least 30 to 40 percent of the rural vote. And we used to be able to get that,” said Jane Kleeb, Nebraska Democratic Party chair. “Why don’t we anymore? We’ve completely lost touch with them.”

Or, more bluntly: “Wine moms won’t save us. Need the beer moms,” said Irene Lin, who is managing Outagamie, Wisconsin, County Executive Tom Nelson’s Senate campaign.

Just because the “wine moms” and other white suburbanites embraced or tolerated the cultural and political agenda of the wokesters, Democrats believed they could ride the wave of outrage—real and fake—into power across the nation.

But eventually, people begin to see the disconnect between their own reality and the reality they were being instructed to believe in. Does anyone really think Abraham Lincoln doesn’t deserve the iconic status he has been given? Who really thinks his name should be removed from schools or his statue torn down? Why are we even having this conversation?

Does anyone really think all whites are racists and constantly work to oppress people of color?

What the voters are rebelling against is more than the nonsense, the false consciousness, of the woke mob that seeks to turn reality upside down and inside out so that it conforms to a radical vision of America.

It’s far from most people’s idea of normal. There’s a lot to be said for normalcy and a return to sanity. It’s a potent political issue, as the Republicans proved on Tuesday.

NRO:

But if Trump was the ring-master for four years, the Democrats have long had a pretty good sideshow of their own, from electing professing socialists such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to linking up with anti-Semites, excusing and in some cases encouraging a summer of riots and arson, trying to defund or disband police departments, making a kind of national penitential rite out of COVID-19 masking and social distancing, etc. The events surrounding January 6 are a serious business, but “What about January 6?” is only going to get you so far — especially when you have Terry McAuliffe out there lecturing parents that they have no business getting themselves involved with what their children are taught in the schools.

Joe Biden, as Representative Spanberger rightly put it, was elected to “be normal and stop the chaos.” And there is some reason to believe that “be normal” comports pretty well with Biden’s personal inclinations: He is a lazy, stupid mediocrity, and the path of normalcy ought to be the path of least resistance. It would be, too, if not for the fact that he is also the hostage of a political party that is addicted to crisis.

“Addicted to crisis,” indeed. Democratic pants-on-fire-Katie-bar-the-door-the-sky-is-falling approach to politics and public policy is an act that’s wearing very thin on the public. The Democrats may “never let a crisis go to waste” but when everything is a crisis, everything gets wasted.

There are far too many Democrats who are heavily invested personally and financially in being woke for their party to change anytime soon. It’s going to take more than James Carville and a few election losses to wake up the woke and get them to realize that they must change or be steamrolled into oblivion by reality.

Until then, Republicans will do very well pushing a “normal” agenda.