We’ve passed the peak of woke politics in the US, and the Harris for president campaign is the leading indicator. Of all the things that Kamala Harris wants you to know about her — that she grew up in a middle-class family, that she’s not Joe Biden, that she has a “to-do list” for the American people — perhaps foremost among them is that she’s not woke. She doesn’t have any rote line asserting this, but achieving distance from the fashionable left-wing politics that defined the Donald Trump years and their immediate aftermath motivates much of what she says and does.
That Harris now feels compelled to disavow so many of the ideas that she once embraced is powerful testament to their political toxicity. An idea has won or lost in American politics when both parties favor or oppose it, or simply don’t want to fight over it anymore. Ronald Reagan’s economics truly prevailed when the Democratic Party, via Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, accepted his basic approach.
Gay marriage won politically when Republicans decided to stop talking about the issue. By this standard, woke attitudes and policies are in marked decline, and Kamala Harris is Exhibit A. Except for her abortion radicalism, she’s turned her back on much of what she once professed to believe or sympathize with.
Defund the police? Absolutely not. Abolish ICE? No way. DEI? Haven’t heard of it.
Medicare for all? That was a long time ago. The Green New Deal? Let’s not get carried away. She has bac.