But heading into 2022, all else isn't likely to be equal. In fact, it could be far worse than that for the Democrats. That's because the Democrats increasingly find themselves on the wrong (unpopular) side of cultural disputes with Republicans. The list of controversial positions the GOP delights in attacking includes: the use of the ideology of “antiracism” to teach American history in public schools; the spread of “woke” ideas in workplaces and the corporate sector; the insistence that tolerance demands the affirmation of radical ideas about the mutability of gender; and the spread of so-called cancel culture throughout American public life. Republicans increasingly define themselves by their opposition to these trends, and Democrats … don't so much affirm them as go along passively for fear of antagonizing the activists who advocate in their favor. As the results of last week's local elections in the U.K. show quite clearly, with support for the Labor Party collapsing in its working-class strongholds, the political right benefits enormously by defining itself in opposition to the cultural left. Once the left comes to be perceived as advocating for a radical cultural agenda, its electoral prospects sink. Trump was so personally unappealing to so many Americans that his presence on the ballot in 2016 and 2020 may have kept this phenomenon from being felt with full force in 2020. That may no longer be the case through the next few election cycles — either because Trump isn't on the ballot or because unpopular leftward cultural trends intensify, or both.