Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now admits the progressive movement's early excesses were "crazy", but her careful retreat from a Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate's radical past looks less like honest reflection and more like a politician running from her own shadow.
Ocasio-Cortez appeared on ABC News's "This Week" on Sunday and addressed the controversial record of Francesca Hong, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Wisconsin who has called for abolishing prisons, defunding the police, and canceling Thanksgiving. Host Jonathan Karl pressed the New York congresswoman on Hong's positions, and Ocasio-Cortez responded by borrowing a line from a fellow progressive: New York City Council member Chi Ossé.
"And I have a local city councilman that has this saying that 'Woke 1 was crazy,'" Ocasio-Cortez told Karl. She then urged voters to look past Hong's history: "And I think that what's important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now."
Rather than own the substance of positions she and her allies championed, Ocasio-Cortez pinned the blame on circumstances. She told Karl that during the pandemic "there was a huge opening of the Overton window", the range of ideas the public will tolerate in political debate.
"We were shut down. There was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place."
She added that "during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today." She called the discussions of that era "quite fruitful."
That framing asks voters to treat calls to abolish police departments and prisons as the political equivalent of a bad haircut from a strange year, something everyone did, nobody meant, and nobody should be held to. But the positions Hong took were not idle pandemic musings. They were policy commitments posted publicly and repeated across outlets.
As we have previously reported, Ocasio-Cortez has been working to put distance between herself and the "defund the police" slogan she once embraced, a pattern that now extends to her handling of Hong's candidacy.
Francesca Hong, a former professional chef and current Wisconsin state legislator, has accumulated a trail of statements that would test any spin operation. In 2021, she wrote a post on X, since deleted, comparing Thanksgiving to a "superspreader event" and connecting the holiday to the deaths of Indigenous peoples. She described Thanksgiving to CNN as "a time that's incredibly painful for many people in our communities."
Hong also posted that police exist to "uphold white supremacy" and called to "defund then abolish" law enforcement, as Breitbart documented. In a separate resurfaced social media post, she described nearly having an anxiety attack at a Culver's restaurant because there were "too many old white people", a statement that carries particular weight in a state where roughly 85 percent of residents are white.
An old social media post from Hong put the point bluntly: "Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621." On a recent podcast, she lamented "toxic white supremacy culture that is ingrained in this country's history" and stated that "racism is the backbone of this history," Just The News reported.
Hong has since walked back some of these stances. She told Fox News that "the governor cannot defund the police, and I won't defund the police. But I will invest in the things we know prevent crime." And she told Politico last week that Thanksgiving is now her "favorite" holiday, quite a reversal from canceling it.
"I'm just going to be real, I'm kind of a curmudgeon when it comes to holidays in general. But right now, what we want to get serious about is making sure we deliver a Democratic trifecta."
That quote captures the whole strategy: acknowledge the awkwardness, pivot fast, and redirect to party goals.
For all her effort to explain away Hong's record, Ocasio-Cortez would not endorse her. She told Karl that her "focus has been in winning back the Congress, winning back the House and positioning ourselves to have the best chance possible to win the Senate." She added that she is "grateful that these candidates have the opportunity to present who they are to their electorate and what they're campaigning on in this moment."
Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez's closest ally in the Senate, has also declined to endorse Hong, the New York Post noted, offering similar reasoning. When the two most prominent democratic socialists in American politics both refuse to back a democratic socialist gubernatorial front-runner, the signal is hard to miss. Hong holds endorsements from four chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America and from progressive members of Congress like Ilhan Omar and Ro Khanna, but the movement's biggest names are keeping their distance.
That caution has fueled speculation about Ocasio-Cortez's own ambitions. She told Karl she has not ruled out a 2028 presidential run, saying she is "very humbled" by support and pointing to a poll showing her leading in New Hampshire. The Washington Examiner reported that her entire posture, the careful distancing, the blame-the-pandemic framing, the refusal to endorse, suggests a candidate who is triangulating toward the center while trying not to alienate her progressive base.
Whether that balancing act can hold is another question. Some DSA members already wonder whether she is left-wing enough, while critics like James Carville have been blunt about her general-election liabilities.
Jonathan Karl did not let Ocasio-Cortez treat the conversation as purely about Hong. He pointed out her own past advocacy for abolishing the police, a position that went beyond even "defund." The Hill's report does not include her specific response to that challenge, which is itself telling. A politician eager to own her record would have answered directly. A politician managing her record would have pivoted.
Ocasio-Cortez chose to frame the entire progressive movement's 2020-era positions as products of extraordinary circumstances, high unemployment, economic shutdowns, a desperate search for solutions. That framing conveniently strips agency from the people who made those arguments. Nobody forced Ocasio-Cortez to advocate for abolishing police. Nobody forced Hong to call Thanksgiving a superspreader event or to post that police exist to uphold white supremacy. These were choices, made publicly, defended at the time, and abandoned only when they became political liabilities.
Questions about her national appeal have mounted in recent months, and her handling of the Hong situation illustrates why. Voters in a general election tend to notice when a politician asks them to forget positions held just a few years ago.
After the interview aired, Ossé, the New York City Council member whose phrase Ocasio-Cortez borrowed, shared a clip of her response on X. His post read: "Woke 1 was crazyyyy, Madame President." The "Madame President" flourish suggests Ossé sees Ocasio-Cortez's repositioning as preparation for a White House run, not just a one-off comment about a Wisconsin primary.
National Review's coverage of the Wisconsin race framed Ocasio-Cortez's appearance as strategic hedging, treating Hong's nomination as inevitable while making excuses for her most extreme positions. The outlet argued that Hong's record makes her a liability who could hand Republicans the Wisconsin governorship, and that Ocasio-Cortez knows it.
Hong holds endorsements from prominent progressives and four DSA chapters. But the candidate who called for canceling Thanksgiving, abolishing police, and expressed anxiety about being around older white voters now needs to win a general election in a purple state. That is the gap between primary politics and governing, and it is the gap Ocasio-Cortez is trying to straddle without falling in.
Veteran Democratic strategists have already questioned whether Ocasio-Cortez can shed her progressive brand convincingly enough to compete nationally. The Hong episode suggests she is going to try, one careful non-endorsement at a time.
Calling your own movement's first chapter "crazy" is not accountability. It is rebranding. And voters can tell the difference.