Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday blamed “woke” fellow Democrats for fracturing their party and distracting it from the issues that matter to most Americans — just hours after Arkansas’s Republican governor accused President Biden of surrendering to the “woke mob.”
During an appearance on the liberal MSNBC cable news channel, Adams agreed when “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough asked if there’s “a disconnect between working-class voters, who should be aligned with Democrats economically, and party leaders.”
“There was. And you look at the numbers: There’s a hemorrhaging of our Latino community, our AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islander] communities, that’s leaving the traditional Democratic base,” Adams said.
The mayor said the exodus began “because we’ve allowed the loudest and those who consider themselves to be ‘woke'” to set the Democratic agenda.
“Some of us never went to sleep and we hear and speak directly to people,” he said. “And I think the party is now understanding that we have to speak at those issues that are important: Jobs, public safety, educating our children, good health care — just these common, kitchen-table issues that we move away from.”
The remarks by Adams, who is black, appeared to represent his first public use of “woke,” which refers to an awareness of progressive social issues, especially those involving race and gender.
During Tuesday’s GOP response to Biden’s State of the Union speech, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeatedly invoked the term while bashing the 80-year-old president.
“I’m the first woman to lead my state. And he’s the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell you what woman is,” she said.
Sanders, 40, also said that Biden’s White House “seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day.”
“Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight,” she added.