The left’s post-mortem of its highly predictable electoral defeat has become a comedy show.

Joe Scarborough lies on bended kneeand licking the boots of a president-elect whom he has likened to Hitler. Nancy Pelosi, who first defended Biden’s mental capacity before knocking him cold, is now blames him for Kamala Harris’ loss. Activist “journalists” claim Harris ran a “perfect” campaign and blame voters “who gave up on democracy.”

Self-improvement characterizes much of what is wrong with the contemporary American left. It is a culture driven by its own self-aggrandizement and social credit points rather than self-examination. Moral condescension and virtue signaling are its main currency.

Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi’s new book on elite hypocrisy, “We have never been awake,” catches the fire of this vanity. Using immigration as an example, he points to the self-management of elites who “have disposable servants who will clean your house, watch your children, walk your dogs, deliver ready-made meals to you” but mask their greed in a holy virtue.

At the same time, the migrant braves oversaturated labor markets, steals working-class jobs and lower pay scales.

For working Americans, this wealth transfer is yet another attack by the same liberal elites who pushed the neoliberal consensus on free trade that enriched themselves—all while eroding working-class communities and shifting jobs overseas through unfair trade laws.

Most workers lost real wages under the Biden administration.

The left’s de rigueur is to cry bigotry when the working class and others oppose this self-dealing. College educators grow fat while expressing moral condescension to anyone who questions their “multiculturalism over nation” pathos or their obsession with victimhood. Pretty smart gig if you can get it.

But al-Gharbi drills down on exactly why virtue signaling is so important to the elite.

In a world where universities “overproduce” the vast number of elites, it has become the method by which elites seek to differentiate themselves and distinguish their higher social credit vis-à-vis their peers.

“‘(W)okeness’ has become a key source of cultural capital among contemporary elites,” the author argues. This is perhaps why the postmodern, deconstructionist left has adopted so many political and cultural positions—on crime, critical race, critical gender, climate absolutism, the emulation of “river to sea” terrorist rhetoric—that play against these fateful needs of donors and activists, but alienating Democrats from most voters.

Instead of reading the election results, the Democrats seem to be doubling down.

The Post this week reported that the White House is encouraging more migrants with, among other things, a glitchy ICE app which allows the 230,000 illegal migrants in New York (and potentially millions elsewhere) to simply “check in” with immigration officials online rather than in person.

This is music to the ears of the criminal cartels who thrive on the promise of minimal surveillance in the country and ease of avoidance.

The Post also reports that the White House continues to fight Texas’ efforts to fortify border barriers to deter the most looming wave of migrants ahead of the inauguration — another boost to the cartels.

Democrats pontificated for the past four years on the virtues of democracy but seem defiant
clearly expressed the will of the electorate in favor of the “virtuous” elites. One possible explanation is that they cynically believe that a worsening migrant crisis will complicate the incoming administration’s cleanup efforts.

But the irony here is that their holiness closes their ears; rather than superior, it leaves them intellectually impoverished. A worsening mess is likely to make the new cleaning crew look more competent and heroic.

This dynamic is at play today across several political fronts. In 2021, for example, a new Biden administration had the proverbial wind at its back on climate policy.

But like most of Western Europe, it avoided the opportunity with condescending preaching and NetZero austerity policies like EV mandates that imposed high costs on American workers and consumers while doing nothing to curb rapidly growing carbon emissions elsewhere on the planet.

As a result, the public throughout the Western world has become skeptical, and the major international initiatives – COP29 and the Paris Agreement – ​​are looking closer to their deathbeds.

Again, this sets the stage for the incoming administration to take advantage of new, more collaborative financing models to develop economically promising renewable energy and carbon capture technologies.

How ironic would it be for the Trump administration to find the necessary common ground on climate internationally to move the issue forward?

Elsewhere, the administration is slowly moving the necessary offensive armaments to Ukraine and
its schizophrenic approach to Israel – promising support one day and then, with even more virtue
signaling, undermining Israel’s efforts to root out the genocidal terrorists in places like Rafah—has also made the world more unstable and set a more favorable stage for Trump’s potential triumphalism on the world stage.

And this is the point. Priggishness and moral condescension, absent any meaningful factual backing, is
not just empty pseudo-intellectualism but because it persistently seeks to shut down debate rather than
discovers knowledge, it makes its practitioners all the more stupid.

That may be the most important thing
autopsy homework the left could pull off the election.