Because the right has, for a very long time, simply been content to sneer at the "egghead" types. My own grandpa referred to anyone who bothered to get a degree in anything as an "educated idiot." The right has only ever been concerned with the more practical areas of higher education, and has let themselves be bullied into not doing to much to address the leftism growing within "the arts" and as represented by "women's studies" and the like.
Because that requires actually trying to understand and adapt to changing social paradigms, and long term, multi-generational planning, not just trying to defend the status quo.
The world will never stop changing, and change is only likely to accelerate in the future. The Right for the most part seem woefully behind the curve on this realization, instead thinking that it can just force the world to stop changing, or change back, to a previous or current status quo.
The Left has no such brainbug about resisting change as society changes, and often actively wants to change parts of society it thinks need change, whether that sector/group wants it or not. That's why they are fine using this pandemic to pull the shit they have, and after Trump Derangment Syndrome kicked in in 2016 (and how they felt cheated over Gore in 2000), the Left no longer feels any need to try to reach across the aisle unless it's just to gaslight, or it's one of the few good moderates Dems like Manchin.
They want their 1984/Star Trek-utopia, and medical tyranny seems to be how the elite plan to implement it.
Edit: And now Biden says we will get back to normal when 97-98% of the population is vaxxed; they've moved the goal posts again.
