Key Democrats say they are done with it. Polling shows Americans are tired of it. But can Democrats successfully move on from “woke” and redefine their identity moving into the 2026 elections?
After the 2024 elections, leader after leader in the Democratic Party joined the chorus, blaming “woke” for the party’s travails.
James Carville, who was a key Clinton strategist, said during an episode of his podcast, that the “woke era” “killed” Democrats in the 2024 elections, adding that, while he thinks the party is “beyond it” at some level, “the image stuck in people’s minds that the Democrats wanted to defund the police, wanted to empty prisons.”
US Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said “over-the-top wokeism” is a “valid attack” on Democrats and needs to be addressed. Former US Congressman Tim Ryan, a Ohio Democrat who lost his Senate race to JD Vance, said the party needs a complete rebrand from this mindset because the name Democrat caused too many people in his state to immediately discount his candidacy.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and US Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona were quoted by Yahoo News saying their party needed to reform the way they speak by tossing out woke phrases like Latinx instead of Latino, or justice-involved individuals instead of prisoners, or economically disadvantaged instead of poor.
Even Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders, Mr. Democratic Socialism himself, said the party needs to move away from “woke” and towards a focus on working class concerns.
Bigger fish to fry
And if you look for it, you can see the attempt at a shift already taking shape. Democrats across the country, and here in North Carolina, are starting to avoid focusing on the cultural issues (whether DEI, LGBTQ, CRT, or whatever other acronyms get pulled into the vague term “woke”). Instead, it seems they plan to shrug and accuse Republicans of being divisive or distracting when they try to reverse these policies.
This means many of the biggest “woke” victories are being unwinded without much pushback.
Rainbow flags that covered everything every June — from corporate branding to town squares — were conspicuously absent, or at least greatly reduced, this summer.
When President Trump called on DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to get rid of Black Lives Matter Plaza, she shrugged and said, sure. Her actual quote was that she had “bigger fish to fry” than to fight over it. So it’s gone.
When the General Assembly gathered this week to override Gov. Josh Stein’s vetoes — including of bills banning DEI in both the UNC System and the K-12 system in North Carolina; and another bill defining male and female as the two recognized genders and preventing transgender males from playing on girls’ sports teams — Stein’s reaction was on a different planet from Democrat reactions in 2016 over HB2, known as the “bathroom bill.”
Rather than defend DEI and gender theory, Stein said these overrides were just a “distraction that divides us,” and the General Assembly should focus on passing a budget instead. Like with Bowser on the Black Lives Matter Plaza situation, it was more of a shrug and a framing of Republicans as the ones bringing up divisive cultural issues.
But Democrats will have to do more than just set aside the “woke” agenda. They will also have to find some issues that the voters care about and convince those voters that Democrats are the ones to champion them.
In a strange twist, Democrats are even pushing back on Trump policies using what were conservative talking points:
- Tariffs get in the way of free trade
- There shouldn’t be any visible daylight between America and its allies (like NATO, Ukraine, and Taiwan)
- The rule of law is vital in immigration decisions
It’s doubtful that they will try to run to the right of Republicans on these issues though. They’re likely just trying to find points to criticize the Trump administration on, but it is surprising nonetheless to see these kinds of comments from what had been seen as the anti-trade, non-interventionist, border-chaos party. Democrats in some West Coast cities are even calling for more law and order on issues like drug enforcement and theft.
Whether “woke” is truly dead is yet to be seen. And certainly not everyone in their base is done with it. There is a core of the American left wing that still holds these values just as strongly and is not ashamed of it. They are bound to push back on any planned Democrat rebrand, especially towards the center.
Some in the party leadership, as well as their consultants who are looking at the polling, want to move on. But to truly do so, Democrats will need to form a new brand and new policy priorities, quickly. The important midterm elections are already well underway. And they will be a test of if Democrats have truly “moved on from woke” and started to develop new approaches, or if, after a long focus on identity, they can’t find one of their own.