No, Joe, you didn’t lose Virginia because you hadn’t got a big enough spending Bill passed

Youngkin (R) the governor-elect of VA

We watched Joe Biden the other night, live, as he talked up a monster-sized Bill that the House had just passed. Huge as in Trillions, and I remember when Billions used to sound crazy big. (And which, btw, will only increase inflation).  In his presser, Biden mentioned the loss the Dems had just suffered in the Virginia gubernatorial race, where Youngkin defeated the Democrat McAuliffe. A loss he claimed was because they, Democrats in the House, hadn’t soon enough “produced for the American people” by passing his monster Bill. But now he had:

Speaking from the White House on Wednesday afternoon, Biden said Democrats need to “produce for the American people.” [Ref]

The other Democrat take was that “Youngkin played the racist card”(*). Whereas my reading is the opposite. It was McAuliffe who played the racist card, again and again, right up to the end, and people were fed up with it.

What the polls tell us -- and what the people at the Youngkin victory rally tell us -- is that there were other issues at play. In order they were: (1) Education (2) The Economy, as in the local state-level economy and (3) Covid-19 and anti-mandate feelings (not anti-vax). And here’s a list of 7 reasons Youngkin won from RCP. None is about Biden’s massive infrastructure bill.

In education the big issue was CRT. Democrats claimed “CRT is not taught at schools”, while Republicans insist that it is -- with evidence -- and was worsening race relations. Again, the Republicans have it. CRT infuses every curriculum in the VA Department of Education -- easy to find online. And so much so that even the Washington Post and the NY Magazine admit it. Teachers and Administrators in the Virginia’s education system said any claim that CRT is not a thing in VA schools is simply “a lie” [And here].  

ADDED: “An insider’s account of how Youngkin won"

(*) ADDED: What sort of Republican “racist”campaign is it that wins a majority of the Hispanic vote, has a double-digit increase in the Black vote, and votes in the first Black woman as Lt-Governor and a Latino as AG? Verrry strange.

If the Dems and their cheerleaders keep on keeping on with CRT and the whole woke agenda, they’ll also keep on losing. Such is the anti woke backlash.