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This is going to be hard to debate, as it largely concerns the inner state of mind of people I either never met, or met only online, but I have a lot of trouble buying into that theory. As far as I could tell wokeness was always ranging from an embarrassment to a source of terror. The true believers were always a minority (something in the range of 10% if memory serves, there were some studies / surveys done on that but I'm not sure I can find them), and it doesn't really look like they suddenly changed their mind either. If you look at the sentiment on Twitter, it didn't change because suddenly people got fed up, it only changed because people were no longer being banned, or were even getting unbanned.
To me it looked like Kamala vs. Trump was "Wokeness on trial", if it delivered a victory, we'd still be stuck in the 2016-2024 vibes. The Blue Tribe went all in with the Coconut-Couchfucker-Joy offensive and there was no sign anyone was getting fed up. In fact, I distinctly remember people making the same old "if you want wokeness to subside, vote for Harris" argument that they were making during Biden's campaign, on the same assumption that it's the trumpness of Trump that made everybody go crazy, and if he wins again, we're just going to have a rerun of 2016-2020... except that didn't happen, he won, and now everybody is talking about the "vibe shift". I really honestly doubt this would be happening if Harris was president.
I agree, because I think the way you're describing it is going way too far, but to me it's clear the issue is quite important to him. I mean, it's literally the first thing he chose to talk about when the environment became more permissive. It's not like he's short on controversial takes he could revisit after the fear of cancellation went away,
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