Night of the Living Woke
13th May 2026
The New York Times columnists Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein disagree more often than they agree, which made it significant that just before the first anniversary of the 2024 election each arrived at, basically, the same explanation for Donald Trump’s victory. “It is completely obvious that the [Democratic] party lost in 2024 because it overcommitted to a range of unpopular left-wing positions,” Douthat wrote. Whatever else the 2024 election may have been, it “was also an ideological referendum, and progressivism lost.”
Klein’s explanation was even more detailed, making it a tougher read for his followers, who are more sympathetic to the Democratic cause than are Douthat’s. “From 2012 to 2024, Democrats moved sharply left on virtually every issue,” Klein observed, with electoral results that were precisely the opposite of those expected and intended.