What happened to wokeness? This is one of the most insistent questions in political commentary today. Do Donald Trump’s reelection and the much ballyhooed “vibe shift” mean that wokeness is gone for good? Or is it just in remission, soon to return as strong as ever?
Zohran Mamdani’s victory over Andrew Cuomo in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary in June, and the reaction to his ascent, are striking data points. What they suggest, I submit, is that wokeness has indeed “peaked,” but also that peaking is not vanishing. The Mamdani campaign offers a glimpse of what a new, post-peak, phase of wokeness will look like.
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Gregory Conti is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an assistant professor of politics at Princeton. He is also Compact's editor-at-large.
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