AOC insists the Democrats' 'woke problem' is made up by Republicans and critics wanting party to run away from racial justice and voting rights

 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats' so-called 'woke problem' was 'made up' to try and push the left away from fighting for racial injustice and election reform, which she claims could help them win. 

'One dangerous aspect of thinking there's a 'woke problem' is that Dem chances for re-election or majorities in House, Senate, & WH rely on the racial justice issue of voting rights,' the New York representative tweeted Sunday evening.

She added: 'Dems distancing from racial justice makes protection of voting rights less likely, ensuring losses.'

Republicans and establishment Democrats claimed that the party's embracing a more progressive agenda and going 'woke' contributed to the wave of defeats in last Tuesday's election.

But AOC, to which the lawmaker is more often referred, says that the term 'woke' is a way for the GOP to launch attacks and deflect from civil rights advancements – such as the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools that became a central issue to the Virginia gubernatorial election.

'Woke' is a term pundits are now using as a derogatory euphemism for civil rights & justice,' Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

'Making up a 'woke' problem results in putting civil & voting rights on the backburner,' she continued. 'In a year state legislatures are planning out GOP majorities & voter suppression, that's dangerous.'

'People think Fox News is just about indoctrinating right-wingers, but it's also about conditioning Dems on what to run away from,' the three-part Twitter thread read.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Republicans and centrist Democrats are creating a fake 'woke problem' to explain away election losses and distract from racial justice problems

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The progressive lawmakers said 'woke' is used by pundits as a derogatory term

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'Framing racial justice as 'controversial' is key to delaying the protection of voting rights (& others) until it's too late,' she posted, insisting: 'We shouldn't indulge it.'

On Tuesday, Republican newcomer Glenn Youngkin beat former Democratic Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe in the gubernatorial race in a state President Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020.

The GOP contenders for lieutenant governor and attorney general were also successful.

In New Jersey's gubernatorial race, which was considered a shoe-in for Democrat incumbent Phil Murphy, came down to razor-thin margins during parts of the week with him besting Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli by just 2.6 per cent.

In the 2020 presidential election, Biden won New Jersey by more than 15 points.

Ocasio-Cortez tweets Sunday came after she hit back last week at Clinton strategist James Carville for suggesting 'stupid wokeness' caused the wave of crushing Democrat defeats last Tuesday.

'There are limits to trying to mobilize a campaign with a 100% moderate strategy without mobilizing the base. (I) said nothing abt 'wokeness' which is a term almost exclusively used by older people these days btw,' The Squad Member wrote on Twitter on Friday.

'The average audience for people seriously using the word 'woke' in a 2021 political discussion are James Carville and Fox News pundits. So that should tell you all you need to know,' she added.

On Wednesday, veteran Democrat Carville tore into 'stupid wokeness' as the root of Terry McAuliffe's defeat in the Virginia governor's race and said some members need to go to 'woke detox'.

AOC, however, blamed moderate Democrats for the stinging losses in the Virginia governor race and the tight gubernatorial election in New Jersey. 

She said the centrist did not handle Republicans' 'race baiting' and acted like middle schoolers with their fighting over President Joe Biden's Build Back Better agenda.

'Historically moderate Democrats have believed the best way to respond to race baiting by the right is to say little/nothing,' Ocasio-Cortez wrote in an Instagram stories Q&A. 'We see how that demoralizes the base you're supposed to protect and turn out while also ceeding white swing voters to the right w/ inadequate responses or silence.'  

Carville, who helped steer Bill Clinton to victory in 1992 aimed squarely at cultural clashes over race, education, and police funding as the heart of the matter, after Republican Glenn Youngkin took down McAuliffe by winning over suburban areas that had gone for Joe Biden just a year ago.

'What went wrong is just 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, Washington,' Carville said as he ticked off election results in an appearance on PBS News Hour.

'I mean, this 'defund the police' lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln's name off of schools. I mean that — people see that,' he said.

He said Terry McAuliffe got 'caught up in something national' and blamed it for his loss (McAuliffe also has deep Clinton ties). 

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Ocasio-Cortez hit back at Clinton strategist James Carville for suggesting 'stupid wokeness' caused the wave of crushing Democrat defeats on Tuesday night

Voters in Minneapolis voted down an effort to replace the police department in the city where George Floyd was killed. 

Carville blasted activists and progressives for hijacking the agenda and driving down turnout. Youngkin set a record for votes cast for a statewide candidate in the Commonwealth by driving up support from his own supporters.

'It's just really — has a suppressive effect all across the country on Democrats. Some of these people need to go to a 'woke' detox center or something,' the Louisiana native riffed, while wearing a Louisiana State University sweatshirt and a Tulane hat.

'They're expressing a language that people just don't use, and there's backlash and a frustration at that,' he continued.

'We got to change this and not be about changing dictionaries and change laws,' he said – as Democrats in Washington struggled to agree on President Joe Biden's agenda.

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Carville spoke on the PBS News Hour and called out the far-left 'defund the police lunacy'

Analysts are still combing over the election results in Virginia, where Youngkin had a wide lead among parents with school-age children, according to exit polls. Virginia parents expressed frustration with school closures. Youngkin also stressed 'critical race theory' that he said was being pushed by Virginia schools, and ran a campaign ad by a Fairfax County, Virginia mother who said her 'heart sunk' at 'explicit' reading material in her son's school class. 

Carville was also referencing a push in San Francisco to rename schools and potential take off the names of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. The city backed down after a public outcry. 

In Buffalo, mayor Mayor Byron W. Brown appears to have prevailed through a write-in campaign against a democratic socialist, India Walton, who beat him in the primary. 

Carville, who boosted Clinton with his 'It's the economy, stupid' mantra, weighed in even as 'squad' member Rep. Ilhan Omar retweeted a message saying progressives would get blamed for McAuliffe's loss, suggesting he didn't run left enough. 

There were echoes of Carville's critique in comments by Sen. Joe Manchin Thursday, although Manchin spoke to economic issues. 

Manchin claimed the US is a 'center-right' country and that President Biden should give up on trying to get the kind of 'major legislation' done that passed under Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. 

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'You wanna know what's wrong with the place? I go to work in a hostile work environment every day,' Manchin said 

'We can't go too far left,' the West Virginia Democrat told CNN from Capitol Hill on Thursday. 'This is not a center-left or a left country. We are a center — if anything, a little center-right country, that's being shown — and we ought to be able to recognize that.'  

'You wanna know what's wrong with the place? I go to work in a hostile work environment every day,' he inveighed, after becoming a center of attention as one of two Democrats in the Senate holding up Biden's economic agenda and demanding changes.

'If you're a Democrat and a Republican is up for election, you're supposed to be against that person,' even if their opponent is 'Donald Duck,' he complained. 

'I just saw it to confirm that we have a divided country … I hope it's a wake-up call for all of us,' the West Virginia Democrat told Fox News' Special Report's Bret Baier about the election results on Wednesday.