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Age of Revolutions came out in late March of 2024. In July, President Joe Biden withdrew as the Democratic presidential nominee after a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump. Biden’s Vice President, Kamala Harris, quickly secured the party nomination but lost to Trump in November. Thus the tide of illiberal populism that Zakaria describes in Age of Revolutions continued to rise even as it was reaching the reading public. As sociologist Musa al-Gharbi noted in a post-election blog post, Trump won in 2024 after losing in 2020, even though he did no better with white voters, because in 2024 he attracted more Black votes, more Hispanic votes, and more Asian votes, and made gains with both men and women. Trump’s victory and the manner of it were a setback for classical liberalism but to some degree a vindication of Zakaria’s analysis of the political dynamics. Zakaria warns that identity politics can become dangerously illiberal. In his view, it is both bad in principle and tactically unwise to embrace illiberal identity politics in an effort to hold back illiberal populism. (In Chapter 8 of Age of Revolutions Zakaria presciently notes “Trump’s inroads among Black, Latino and Asian voters in 2020.”)

Zakaria’s own comments about the presidential election made shortly after Trump’s triumph are of interest as well. In a column for The Washington Post , Zakaria blamed Kamala Harris’s loss on three errors made by the Democratic Party. The first was failing to take stronger steps against illegal immigration. (See also his comments on this topic in the Conclusion chapter.) The second error was overuse of the legal system against Trump, in the form of multiple criminal filings against him in various state and federal courts. These provoked a backlash of sympathy that increased his support. The third error was the Democratic Party’s fixation on identity politics, especially the policing of people’s language, such as their use of gendered pronouns, which the average voter rejects. According to Zakaria, “The entire focus on identity has morphed into something deeply illiberal.” For similar criticism of identity politics, see Chapter 8.

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