Tuesday night's elections across several states delivered overwhelmingly positive news for Democrats. But one columnist is also directly warning MAGA Republicans that the lopsided victories for diverse candidates signifies that the GOP is badly losing its culture war.
In a Wednesday column for the San Francisco Chronicle, op-ed columnist Drew Magary announced he had "terrible news for red America" in that their war on "woke" had clearly failed given Democrats' victories on Tuesday night. He pointed out that Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race, Abigal Spanberger won the Virginia gubernatorial race by promising to build more affordable housing and Democrat Mikie Sherrill was elected to be the New Jersey's next governor after promising to codify abortion protections in the Garden State's constitution.
"Everywhere you looked, woke or woke-adjacent candidates won big," Magary proclaimed. "Even more distressing, the state of Woke-ifornia just voted YES to a gerrymandering plan."
"Because Tuesday, amid the fiery embers of a self-immolating democracy, woke staged an electoral renaissance, and now it’s coming for you," he added.
Magary went on to argue that he felt no sympathy for MAGA, as last year he "watched as American voters handed the country over to a criminal enterprise headed by a broken television set" and has since "spent the near entirety of 2025 watching that enterprise eat its way through this country’s federal workforce, its military, its legacy media and even the White House itself." He observed that "woke was felled by this onslaught, and outright bigotry had become the new order."
However, Magary opined that Tuesday marked a significant change in that order, as voters came out specifically to vote for "woke" candidates and policies, saying: "These people spent eight months living in a woke-free America and collectively decided, 'We don’t want this.'"
"What we DO want is to be left the f—k alone. Contrary to what Ted Cruz might tell you, that’s what woke does," he wrote. "Woke lets you drive around town without the threat of a cop pulling you over to gun you down. Woke lets you be gender fluid without an emergency PTA meeting springing up outside your door. Woke lets you go to college without entering into a modern sharecropping agreement. It lets children read, lets every citizen be able to vote without a fuss, leaves the original recipe for Tylenol intact, and endeavors to keep our air and water clean. Woke, in other words, is good."
"You conservatives tried to kill woke, only for it to mount an impressive comeback," he added. "I hope that leaves you triggered, and I hope no one offers you sympathy for it."
Click here to read Magary's full column.