Remember Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s ill-fated campaign for the Republican presidential nomination? He proudly proclaimed that he made his state the place where “woke goes to die” and promised that he would do for America what he had done in Florida.
The 2024 election shows that, for many voters, DeSantis’s message was the right one, even if he was the wrong messenger. While the Florida governor talked a lot about what he would do to end woke culture, Donald Trump did him one better.
He turned every rally into a battle in the war on woke.
If Democrats and progressives are ever to come to terms with the Trump phenomenon, they will have to come to terms with the fact that a majority of American voters cast their ballots for him, knowing him to be crude, offensive and as politically incorrect as anyone could be.
In 2016, Trump was something of an unknown quantity. He seemed more to be bluffing than political savant.
In 2024, we all know who Trump is. This time, we can’t claim ignorance as an excuse.
In the wake of the 2016 election, progressives could attribute the Trump phenomenon to white working-class grievance and resentment. This year, he assembled a multiracial, cross-generational coalition that complicates the previous explanation of what fueled his rise.
Millions cast their ballots for him, not in spite of but because of what progressives find most offensive about him. They voted for the man whose voice was caught demeaning women on the Access Hollywood tapes, who incited an attack on the Capitol, who is a convicted felon, who was found liable for committing sexual assault and who violated every convention of woke culture.
Progressives must come to terms with that fact — and they have no time to waste. But there will be no quick fixes.
As Anand Giridharadas puts it, welcome to “the rebuilding years.” He notes that “there is a kind of freedom in the rebuilding year. ... You’re not expected to turn around and win the title, because you acknowledge that you’re broken. Your work is not winning, not at first.........