Woke Hubris Doomed Democrats, Not Inflation
Wokeism has evolved into the very cancer it claims to battle: elitism and privilege.
Last week, the American electorate dealt the Democrat Party the most crushing political defeat of the 21st century. Powered by a diverse coalition of voters, Donald Trump not only won the electoral college and popular vote, but secured the House and Senate, setting the national stage for a dramatic rightward shift.
Blindsided by the landslide, Democrat emotions have ranged from genuine introspection to full blown TikTok meltdowns. But amid the back-peddling and finger-pointing, James Carville’s classic quip, “It’s the economy stupid,” has emerged as the de facto explanation among Democrats.
But was it the economy?
To be sure, inflation was a factor. Nobody likes high prices. But to assume inflation was the only factor is a failure to see the forest through the trees, and a surefire recipe to cook up more future embarrassing political losses. Both Nixon and Reagan, after all, won reelection against a backdrop of high inflation.
Others have pointed to education, suggesting Trump voters are too stupid to know what is in their own best interest. However, the implication that not having a college degree equates to not being intelligent is itself an uneducated assumption about the economic incentives that drive daily decisions (for example, I would hardly call it intelligent to assume $100k in school debt during an economic downturn).
In addition, this explanation glosses over the fact that the election saw a whopping 10 point swing in college educated counties across the country. Cities ranging from Manhattan to New Haven all saw significant Republican gains. In fact, some of Trump’s biggest gains were in college towns!
So why, then, did Democrats lose the election?
The answer is hubris. For all of the hyperbole around gas and immigrants, the election was bigger than gas and immigrants. It was about the misplaced priorities of the modern left, which not only spends a disproportionate amount of its energy trafficking in grievance and victimhood, but presents itself as pessimistic, paternalistic, and out-of-touch as a result.
Nothing illustrates how out-of-touch the left is more than wokeism, which over the years has seeped into the Democrat Party apparatus and short-circuited common sense faster than one of RFK’s brain worms. What does it mean to be woke? Rooted in the Black community, the term originally embodied a conscious nobility. A heightened awareness of social injustice, privilege, and inequality.
But wokeness today has morphed into something alien. It has become a Frankenstein of fringe ideas ranging from men getting pregnant to defunding the police to children surgically altering themselves under the guise of “affirming care,” despite not being old enough to drink a beer.
None of this seems sensible to the average person. To worsen matters, Democrats deride any average person who expresses concern. But those concerns are tangible and widespread. According to Gallup, 69 percent of Americans oppose men playing in women’s sports, including half of all Democrats. Likewise, 68 percent of adults oppose giving youth puberty blockers.
Democrats say they are promoting tolerance. But when and where Democrats apply tolerance feels arbitrary at best. After all, if a group of middle school children identified as future Republican voters, would Democrats still enthusiastically “affirm” their feelings, or would constructs become binary again?
The spate of school cancellations across the country in wake of Trump’s election victory tells us all we need to know.
The truth is wokeism has become a religion for those on the left who lack religion. It is how the left attempts to explain the world. It is the ethics and morals upon which the universe is built. It is the lens in which good and evil are distilled. It is the filter in which all the complexities of life are reduced to pigmentation and organs.
Yes, people can believe what they want. But like religion, it also means that not everybody else in society has to embrace it. Nor does it mean that government should endorse and promote it. And that is what average people from New Jersey to Los Angeles overwhelmingly pushed back against when they threw Democrats out of office last week.
The lone survivors? Moderates.
Of course, one could argue this is a reductionist take itself. But if Democrats should blame anyone for the reductionist absurdity of wokeism, it should blame themselves. Over the years, the left has branded everything as racist, from math to reading to exercise to dieting.
Is there anything that isn’t racist?
That’s the question that the average voter inevitably asks. But according to woke orthodoxy, the answer is no. The woke gaze stipulates everything is rooted in racism, misogyny, colonialism, or some internalized combination of all three. And anyone who thinks otherwise should “go kill themselves" as one college professor recently grumbled on social media.
Other users on social media have suggested that the left lost because it doesn’t have its own Joe Rogan. But a freewheeling podcast like the Joe Rogan Show in which ideas are freely discussed feels incompatible with the modern left, which is why Joe Rogan himself abandoned the left.
In reality, the modern left hates debating ideas. It mocks open dialogue. It despises curiosity that does not conform to its rigid orthodoxy. That is the bubble that unchecked hubris produces.
The irony is that this same bubble illustrates how wokeism has evolved into the very cancer it claims to be battling: privilege! After all, I can’t think of anything more privileged than having the spare time to sit around and constantly condemn everything as being a form of privilege.
To be clear: There is no place for hatred. There is no place for bigotry. Everybody deserves to be treated with respect, compassion, and love.
But the problem is not whether different types of people exist. The disagreement is not whether injustice or discrimination exists. The problem is that certain people exist who disingenuously frame everything that doesn’t reflect their own beliefs as a form of injustice or discrimination.
That is not how the average voter views the world. The average voter does not view the complexities of life through the prism of race and gender. The average voter does not obsess over pronouns. The average voter does not aspire to wallow in grievance and victimhood.
The average voter is pragmatic. The average voter yearns to feel optimistic. The average voter desires to have a stable economy, a safe neighborhood, a K-12 school system that prioritizes useful skills to succeed in real life, a reasonable social safety net, equal treatment under the law, and a government that puts its own country before others.
I dislike Trump. I strongly disagree with his rhetoric and policies toward immigrants. But Democrats have made a monumental mistake in believing this election was about Trump. In reality, the election was about THEM.
They are just too blind to see it.
Brandon Loran Maxwell is an opinion writer and prize winning essayist. His commentary has appeared at The U.S. Supreme Court, The Hill, Salon, L.A. Times, Vox, NPR, PBS, Washington Post, Yahoo, Washington Examiner, and more. In addition, Brandon is director of the movie “American Homeboy” (Apple TV), and author of the forthcoming book, “Bomb The Wall! Musings From The Beltway To The Barrio” (Barnes & Noble and Amazon).