EDITORIAL: Time for ‘woke’ detox?

An autopsy of Tuesday’s election highlights how the Democratic carnage extended far beyond Virginia. Yet the woke socialists now dominating the party’s politics remain aggressively oblivious. Self-reflection is obviously not a progressive strong suit.

“And honestly, if anything, I think the results show the limits of trying to run a fully 100 percent super-moderated campaign that does not excite, speak to or energize a progressive base,” argued Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez following this week’s balloting.

Everybody is entitled to an opinion. But any Democrat who believes the party’s road to success hinges on going full lefty in order to gin up progressive turnout must be a Republican in disguise. And, across the country, the election results bear this out.

■ In Minneapolis, a murky proposal to reform the police department — born out of the “defund the police” movement — lost handily. Registered Democrats account for 70 percent of the electorate, yet the measure failed 57-43. In addition, four of the eight City Council members who embraced the ballot question lost their seats.

■ In New York state, voters turned down three Democratic ballot questions that touched on immigration and voting procedures. One proposal would have mandated that those in the country illegally be counted for purposes of redistricting; two others would have enacted same-day registration and expanded the availability of absentee ballots. Who knew deep-blue New York was full of racist vote suppressors?

■ In Seattle, a Republican won the city attorney post for the first time in 32 years. Ann Davison ran on a law-and-order platform, while her Democratic opponent was described by The Associated Press as a “police and jail abolitionist.” Turns out that, even in a liberal stronghold such as the Emerald City, residents aren’t eager to become guinea pigs in a social justice experiment involving crime and punishment.

■ In Buffalo, a socialist who prevailed in the Democratic primary handily lost the general election to incumbent Democrat Byron Brown, who ran a write-in campaign. Mr. Brown appealed to party moderates, while his progressive opponent initially jumped on the “defund the police” bandwagon.

■ In school board races across the country and in state legislative contests in blue strongholds such as New Jersey, Republicans overperformed by portraying their Democratic opponents as captive to the far-left.

“Well, what went wrong is that stupid wokeness,” frustrated Democratic strategist James Carville said on “PBS NewsHour” Wednesday. “Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis. Even look at Seattle. I mean, this ‘defund the police’ lunacy, this ‘take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools,’ that — people see that. … Some of these people need to go to a ‘woke’ detox center or something.”

Gerald F. Seib of The Wall Street Journal put it succinctly. “As the dust settles,” he wrote Wednesday, ” ‘defund the police’ appears to be one of the more misguided rallying cries of modern times.”