“What is your wokest opinion?” the young woman asked me. It was close to midnight at an al-fresco bar in a gentrified part of Washington DC. A few minutes earlier, the screen on the wall had declared that the Democrats had retaken control of the Senate. The party’s candidates were winning in states that hadn’t gone blue for decades, from South Carolina to Texas. The woman was grinning with the sensation of rediscovering a forgotten social power.