Election 2026

The 'Vibe Shift' Was Real, but It Wasn't What the GOP Thought It Was

Most Americans wanted a return to normalcy, not a different flavor of culture war.

Jesse Walker | 11.4.2026 12:00 PM

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The words vibe shift entered American political discourse in the early months of 2022. The transmission belt was an article in The Cut about Sean Monahan, a professional trendspotter with a fondness for the phrase. Monahan's beat is culture, not politics, and his rundown of what he meant by it involved sneakers and music more than any candidate for office, but the term acquired a political resonance as the Great Awokening wound down and the COVID lockdowns came to an end.

Again: It was 2022. Not 2024. A lot of punditry has reassigned the phrase to the '24 election and suggested that it meant Donald Trump is president now, and things are going to change. But Trump was not president in 2022. If anything, Trump's standing was at a low ebb. Nor did the term mean a cultural swing from super-woke to super-anti-woke. Instead it seemed to sum up an exhaustion with culture warring of all kinds. It carried connotations of one of the great........

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