Put CNN analyst and former Obama administration official Van Jones in the steadily growing column of Democrats who believe the far-left faction of their party are going too far with all of their cultural ‘wokeness.’
In comments on Friday, Jones pointed out that he’s “never met a Latinx” person, adding that the way leftists talk is “just weird” and that they don’t appeal to ordinary working-class Americans.
In an appearance with “New Day” anchors John Berman and Brianna Keilar, Jones discussed Democratic political prospects going into November’s midterm elections, arguing that the party doesn’t appear to have a cohesive message that is resonating with the people in the middle.
The former Obama official began by explaining that the Democratic Party was quickly becoming “the party of the very high and the very low,” noting that the party is trying so hard to please academics and financial elites as well as those at the very bottom of society that the largest group — the middle — was getting lost.
“If you pull out the working class, you’ve got people who are very well educated and very well off. Those people talk funny — Latinx? I’ve never met a Latinx. I’ve never met a BIPOC. I’ve never met — you know — all this weird stuff that these highly-educated people say, it’s bizarre. Nobody talks that way at the barber shop, the nail salon, the grocery store, the community center — but that’s how we talk now, so that’s weird,” he said.
“And then the people who are very low down on the economic ladder need a bunch of stuff,” Jones continued. “You wind up overpromising — you know, ‘We’ve gotta give you reparations,’ to people at the bottom of the economic ladder, talking weird to appeal to people at the top of the economic ladder, and the working class walks away from you. That is the danger we’re facing,” Jones noted.
WATCH:
CNN host Van Jones leaves panel in shock after slamming the elitism of the Democrat party. pic.twitter.com/V4zylQ6on2
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) June 17, 2022
Jones’ comments echo the sentiment of other Democrats, including longtime strategist James Carville, who has frequently spoken out about the party’s focus on “woke” language at the expense of real kitchen table issues the vast majority of Americans care more about.
“I mean, this ‘defund the police’ lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools. I mean that — people see that,” Carville said after Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin won unexpectedl last November.
“It’s just really — has a suppressive effect all across the country on the Democrats. Some of these people need to go to a ‘woke’ detox center or something. They’re expressing a language that people just don’t use, and there’s backlash and a frustration at that,” he added.
‘Latinx’ in particular does not poll well with Latinos and Hispanics, for instance. One survey from January 2021 found that over 90 percent of Latinos and Hispanics rejected the term.
Liberal comedian Bill Maher of HBO’s “Real Time” is also a critic of the wokeness, saying in March during a show that he hasn’t changed, but the direction of his party has.
Maher appeared on the Ben Shapiro Sunday Special, where he told the show’s namesake that he wanted to be clear with viewers, saying that he has not changed political viewpoints after nearly two decades.
“I haven’t changed at all. My politics haven’t changed. They’ve changed. “People say to me sometimes, ‘Have you changed?’ No!”
“It’s that, five years ago, no one was talking about defunding the police. I never heard that phrase five years ago. That’s not me changing, that’s things changing. I’m reacting to it, as I’ve always been,” he added.
“Letting three-year-olds decide what gender they are, this wasn’t something five years ago. Free speech used to be a left-wing thing that we were proud [of] and owned, and now, that seems to be under attack,” he continued.
