On an election night that gave conservatives nearly more luminous moments than we could count, one shone with particular clarity. Around 1 a.m., before the networks called the presidential race but long after the result was obvious, CNN’s Van Jones faced the camera to deliver a characteristically weepy monologue. Black women and Hispanic people, Jones lamented, had “woke[n] up … with a dream and [were] going to bed with a nightmare.” Hardly missing a beat, fellow panelist David Urban asked how we could be sure such Americans hadn’t voted for Donald Trump.

Those wishing to mark the exact instant of wokeness’s demise as a going political concern could do worse than point to this television exchange. Here was Jones, captain of the Resistance, playing the race card with a shamelessness rarely seen since 2020’s Summer of George. Yet rather than shrink away, Urban, a white Republican, gave a smirking reply that exposed the ridiculousness of Jones’s assumptions. Needless to say, no bolt of lightning shot through the news channel’s studio to singe the GOP operative’s eyebrows. Conservatives could learn something from that. If wokeness really is behind us, isn’t it time we all start acting like it?