AI Summary
5 min readIn an interview earlier this month, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described the era of progressive maximalism that crested around 2020 as “Woke One.” It was a funny line, but for Idris Kalloun, a staff writer at The Atlantic and former Washington bureau chief for The Economist, it also captured a serious political problem. Democrats cannot simply laugh off that decade and move on. On this episode of Deseret Voices, host McKay Coppins and Kalloun examine why the party’s attempt to distance itself from “wokeness” is failing, what “Woke 2” might look like, and whether any Democrat has figured out how to walk the line between repudiation and sincerity.
What “Woke One” Actually Was
Kalloun defines wokeness not as a set of policies but as a worldview: “a set of views of the world that divides it into oppressor and oppressed.” Emerging from academic disciplines like critical theory and intersectionality, it became a kind of praxis that leapt from campus into mainstream American life around 2020. Its central problem, in his view, is philosophical: “wokeness is not liberal.” Where liberalism values the individual and their autonomy, wokeness “collapses the individual into these identities.” You become a recipient of white privilege, incriminated in white supremacy regardless of your own actions. That framework, he argues, produced strange policy positions. Defunding the police ba
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:02) **Opening: The 'Woke 1' Problem** - McKay Coppins introduces the episode's central dilemma: can Democrats distance themselves from the unpopular ideas of the "woke" era?
- 2 (02:27) **Defining 'Woke 1': A Worldview of Oppressor vs. Oppressed** - Kalloun gives a neutral definition of wokeness as a distinct ideology, not just left-liberalism.
- 3 (04:21) **The Problems with Woke 1: Illiberalism and Bad Policy** - Kalloun explains his philosophical and policy-based objections to the era.
- 4 (07:57) **The Political Poison: Censorship, Illiberalism, and a Scolding Tone** - The era's style was inherently off-putting to voters, which contributed to the 2024 backlash.
- 5 (09:17) **Why Can't Democrats Just Laugh It Off?** - Kalloun explains why AOC's strategy of minimizing the era won't work for the party as a whole.
- 6 (11:07) **The Missing Element: Class Consciousness in 'Woke 1'** - Kalloun notes a key oddity of the era that hurt Democrats with working-class voters.
- 7 (12:38) **The DSA and 'Woke 2': A Shift to Economics?** - The conversation explores whether the Democratic Socialists of America represent a genuine evolution or a rebrand.
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Show Notes
AOC says "Woke 1 was crazy" — but is laughing off an era of defunding the police, prison abolition and ideological conformity actually enough? On this episode of "Deseret Voices," McKay Coppins sits down with The Atlantic's Idrees Kahloon to ask why Democrats can't simply wash their hands of Woke 1.0 and what the party's chaotic 2026 primaries reveal about its identity crisis heading into 2028.
In this conversation, you'll learn:
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Why Republicans will never let Democrats "slink away" from woke-era positions
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How DSA candidates in 2026 still endorse prison abolition and resist prosecuting violent crime
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What the horseshoe between far-left and far-right ideas on race actually looked like
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Why wokeness, despite its Marxist roots, had almost no class consciousness — and how that pushed working-class voters rightward
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How Zohran Mamdani pulled off a genuine political reinvention while others couldn't
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The "law of excluded middle" — why genuine liberalism is being crushed between wokeness and the MAGA backlash
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Whether Trump will hold the GOP together or become the Lyndon Johnson of 2028
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Why the moral gains that preceded wokeness are now at risk in the backlash era
“Deseret Voices” is hosted by award-winning journalists McKay Coppins and Jane Clayson Johnson, who go beyond the headlines to explore the stories, people, and ideas shaping our world today. Through thoughtful, in-depth conversations, the “Deseret Voices” podcast brings clarity and common ground to the complex issues defining our time.
“Deseret Voices” is a Deseret News podcast, produced by Keira Farrimond, Creative Director - Video & Podcasts.
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