This time three years ago, as difficult as it may be to remember, a hot topic of political discussion was “going back to brunch.”

It was a callback to a few years prior, when a rash of signs at anti-Trump protests had proclaimed that If Hillary Had Won, We’d Be at Brunch Right Now. “Brunch” became a shorthand for the attitude of liberals whose political complacency had been shattered by the rise of Donald Trump — and who now wanted their complacency back.

As 2020 drew to a close, Trump finally seemed to be out of the picture. He’d decisively lost the election — with Biden beating him in the crucial swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia and racking up almost seven million more votes than Trump overall. So the debate between leftists and “brunch” liberals was about whether to keep pushing for a more just and equal society or to call a return to the Obama-era status quo good enough.