Welcome to the Post-Progressive Political Era – WSJ

Young people are more culturally progressive than their elders, but large-scale college freshman data and exit polls show a substantial rightward shift among young people from 2021-24. In Britain, YouGov s tracker finds the under-25s moving sharply right on transgender issues and immigration since 2022. Both elite and public opinion on transgenderism has shifted against the left in the past two years, its first cultural loss in six decades.

The new vibe shift isn t, as with the 1990s reaction to political correctness, confined to the pages of elite outlets like the New Republic and the New York Times. Instead, social media and today s opinion-led media, which helped spread woke ideas off campus in the 2010s, have facilitated a wider backlash that has entered state and federal politics. Op-eds in liberal outlets have criticized diversity training, cancel culture, transgender medicine, DEI administrators and diversity statements.

Confronted by this broad-based rejection, progressive activists have lost confidence and energy. This contributed to the muted and disorganized reaction to Donald Trump s election in 2024 as compared with 2016. Indeed, the left s response to Mr. Trump today draws more on traditional idioms like free speech, due process and the Constitution than on the tropes of identity politics.

via www.wsj.com

Eric Kaufmann

The question is, can we turn this aircraft carrier around before it beaches itself on the shores of crazyland.