Michael Goodwin: Woke might be wounded but the radical left is still infiltrating our politics

The woke fever has broken, and the movement is wounded.But in the spirit of Mark Twain’s line that “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” ignore any claims that the mob of radical leftists rampaging through our politics has been defeated.The impetus for the premature obituaries is a single race in Wisconsin where a wacky socialist squandered a huge lead and lost by a narrow margin to a more-centrist opponent in the Democrats’ primary for governor.The oddities of the contest are too many to draw comforting conclusions from the outcome.

They start with the fact that Francesca Hong, a member of the state assembly, lost by just 3,800 votes despite a history of calling for canceling Thanksgiving and defunding the police.The victor, a black county executive named David Crowley, had dropped out of the race and then re-entered it.He had the support of just 7 percent in a late poll, but analysts say most undecided voters swung his way in the final days, giving him the nomination by less than half of a percentage point.So hold the celebrations.

Woke is wounded, but very much alive and still capable of doing more damage to America’s cohesion and leading gullible young minds into the weeds of society and the fantasies of revolution.Like a contagious disease that turns its victims stark raving mad, it was born out of a hatred for Donald Trump after he had the nerve to defeat Hillary Clinton for the Oval Office in 2016.Sen.Bernie Sanders ran far to the left of Clinton in the Dem primaries, but she controlled the party apparatus.As the nominee, she played the dirtiest dirty trick ever with the fictional Steele dossier, and had no political heirs after her stunning defeat.Instead, it was Sanders’ radical platform and energized youthful following that crowned him the godfather of woke.His most durable and dynamic offspring is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who pulled off a stunning upset in a 2018 congressional primary in Queens, and won the general election.That m...