strategy wise i definitely think that the aoc wing of the party would have a genueinly better chance of winning the election, not because it is woke, but in spite of it being woke. people are willing to overlook trump's unsavory aspects for economic reasons and thus people will overlook "woke" for economic reasons as well, so bernie sanders and aoc promising programs will be able to get enough voters to overcome any such oppositon. what people aren't willing to tolerate would be simultaneously being both corporate and woke at the same time the way kamala was perceived to be, albeit as you said they seemed to have at the last minute realized that "woke" was more of a drag than an asset. the corproate wing of the democratic party however wants to do everything in its power to eliminate the populist wing of the party and purging woke would be a decent enough excuse to do that. the dnc has "winning" only as a secondary priority. the first priority is the maintain their funding, and "winning" is only something they need to do because their donors won't fund them if they can't win. thus they need to win just enough elections that it is possible for their donors to see some kind of return on their investment and anything they win beyond that is just a bonus. they still won a lot of house seats and have senators and governors so the dnc is still the requisite machine it needs to be to get funding, and if anything the populist wing is more of a danger to scaring the donors than the prospect of being in the opposition permanently as there is usefulness in being in the opposition.
Canada