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Ross Douthat

By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

Across Donald Trump’s presidency, the American establishment achieved an unprecedented level of ideological unity and conformity — first in opposition to Trump himself, and then in the embrace of progressive ideology, in the “Great Awokening” that reached a crescendo in the hotter months of 2020.

Since then we’ve watched cracks spread throughout this edifice, dividing groups and institutions that once seemed to move in lock step. These fault lines include the split between a more ideological academic culture, where wokeness seems entrenched, and corporate and media realms, where its hold has somewhat weakened. They include the divisions between donors, university administrators and activists exposed and heightened by the Hamas attacks and the Israel-Gaza war. They include the struggle over Joe Biden’s fitness to run again, in which the liberal intelligentsia and the Democratic Party were temporarily at war, and the emergence of new right-leaning factions within the American elite.

But now, with the surge of support for Kamala Harris’s candidacy, you can sense an effort to overcome these divisions, to reassert the establishment’s anti-Trump consensus, to recover the unity of 2020 and put the full power of what Nate Silver once called the “indigo blob” at the presumptive Democratic nominee’s disposal.

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