Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, appearing on an ABC Sunday talk show interviewed by Jonathan Karl, had a word salad answer to a simple question that is every bit as bad or even worse than anything Vice President Harris has ever produced. 

Here’s the setup by Mr. Karl, who should have been much tougher in this interview: “So you have Wisconsin coming up next, Francesca Hong, who is the Democratic Socialist of America supported candidate for governor.” Mr. Karl added: “What do you make of those controversial statements I’m sure you’ve seen?” adding, “How do you, how do you get around that? AOC replied: “My understanding is that Francesca Hong has made clear her present stances.” Mr. Karl: “Yeah, she’s moved away from a lot of that.” AOC: “Right, she’s moved away from it and I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘woke one was crazy.”

This is beyond goofiness. AOC is trying to back out of a lot of issues and values that she herself has stood for. And there’s no such thing as blaming something called “woke one.”  You can’t laugh off defunding the police, or 20 million illegal immigrants from open borders, or closing down schools and colleges and businesses — which created unbelievable physical and mental hardship and torment and loneliness and alcohol and drug addictions. And suicides and family breakups. And just about everything else that these crazy left-wingers believed in.

Framing white supremacy as an embedded/systemic American problem, “Defund the Police” as a racial-justice project, immigration rhetoric centered on racialization and systemic cruelty, the Green New Deal’s combination of climate policy with sweeping system injustices, abolish ICE, men in women’s sports.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez cannot laugh this stuff off. She said it and one way or another she continues to say it because she believes it. By the way, because she believes it, a recent poll shows her growing unpopularity in her own congressional district in New York City’s outer boroughs.

People are onto her. Now the same holds true for the front-runner in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor, Francesca Hong. She has a whole litany of far-left socialist or communist policy ideas. And she’s trying to sluff them off as some old internet posts. But they are not. She said them and she believes them.

No more Thanksgiving because it’s a “colonizer holiday.” Abolish the police department that “exists to uphold white supremacy.” She wants a state public option for healthcare, a state public bank, publicly owned grocery stores, to repeal Governor Scott Walker’s right to work laws, illegal migrant state IDs, sanctuary policies, a $20 minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, and a 17 percent tax on millionaires and corporations.

We don’t need any of this for Wisconsin or Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan, or for that matter Zohran Mamdani’s New York. Or anywhere in America. American free enterprise and free market capitalism is working very well, thank you very much.

The Atlanta Fed is looking for 6 percent growth in the current quarter. The unemployment rate is historically low 4.1 percent. Private jobs are rising and government jobs are declining. Manufacturing and construction output and jobs are running at the fastest pace in decades. Inflation is modest. And President Trump has changed the culture towards traditional and religious values. Tell the comrades to stay home.