A Clintonite politician not named Bill Clinton being totally unable to communicate like a normal person? Especially after 2016, everyone ever involved with the Clintons should never be allowed to run again.
Youngkin has moved slightly ahead on 538 poll aggregator mainly on the back of a Fox news poll showing him 8 ahead with LVs. However another A+ Wapo poll shows McAuliffe with a small lead. The race is a toss-up though if I had to guess, Youngkin seems to have some late polling momentum which may indicate an edge.
If he does win, education and “critical race theory” will probably have played a role and certainly Republicans will interpret it as such. I think Democrats are in denial about these issues and how unpopular they are with some swing voters. There are a lot of pedantic arguments about what is or isn’t CRT which are largely irrelevant. The point is that there are lot of dubious ideas about race coming from academia which are now seeping into the general culture including schools and Republicans appear to be successfully mobilizing voters against them. Whether you call these ideas CRT or not is not important.
It is important to know what they’re referring to if you want to counter the refutation. They could be opposed to anything from “any mention of slavery or race” all the way to “stating that ‘White’ people are inherently inferior”.
Often on this message board I have argued against arguments that come close to the latter. But counter the actual examples. And with millions of teachers in America, there have to be some examples. But just saying “I just don’t like CRT” doesn’t really inform me of anything. Even if it means something other than classical CRT, it doesn’t actually say what it is that they oppose.
So you can’t really say that Democrats need to be take heed of an inchoate anti-CRT feeling, That doesn’t actually lead to any practical suggestions.
The kind of dubious concepts that should be avoided are ones like “white fragility” and the idea that 21st century America is an example of white supremacy. Or that the American revolution was fought to preserve slavery.
What difference does it make whether they can explain their objections to you? If it’s seen as progressive social justice agenda, they’re against it.
Whether there is a reasonable and non-controversial explanation that Democrats could have offered is also irrelevant. McAuliffe’s staggeringly stupid comment about whether parents have a say in what public schools are teaching their children was an unforced error that will take a miracle at the ballot box to recover from.
I hate using vapid aspirational language like “I hope”, but dumb fucking luck is all that’s left to hope for now.
What about all the gun control laws the Democrats rammed through the last few years in Virginia? Swing voters poll that they support such things until they realize (too late) how it actually affects them. And pushing such an extreme agenda on that issue eventually bites the Dems in the ass.
Yes but still, what’s with the pejorative?
As many of us have attempted to get through Democrat skulls for the past five years, “but, but, TRUMP!!” is not a platform. And “wouldn’t you rather have this non-threatening old-establishment boring guy?” is not that effective when the other side is superbly efficient at using any possible reach to accuse the nonthreatening old-establishment boring guy as someone who’ll endanger your children.
Must say that having resided in Northern VA for work the last 4 years, for the past 2 of all-democrat-majority it looked little different from the prior two of split government, save for fewer Confederate memorials (though it being Virginia that means there’s still a shit-ton of those). TBF most of those last 2 years having happened under CoVid, everyone was having a miserable time so I can see how the opposition can easily capitalize on the mood.
Trump urged Virginians to vote for Youngkin while casting doubt on the state’s election system, because of course he did.
He lost Virginia by 10 points in 2020, so obviously there’s something wrong with the tabulations.
Correct. Unfortunately there is NO way to take heed of, or counter ‘I have no idea what it is but I don’t like it’:
In that 38-second video, the Virginia voter is very, very clear that he will vote Republican because of Critical Race Theory—the most important issue in the Virginia election, he says!—even though he doesn’t know what CRT is.
He has been told by Tucker Carlson and all his other radio/television gods that CRT is a Terrible Thing that Democrats are Forcing On Virginians.
And he believes what he is told.
As if he were ever going to consider voting Dem to begin with. 
Youngkin may be slightly ahead in polling but McAuliffe’s already got a large number of early votes in the bank.
Oh yes, the horror:
More recently, in the fallout of the Virginia Beach mass shooting in the summer of 2019, Governor Northam’s Democrat controlled General Assembly have attempted to pass substantial new gun control legislation.[15] In February 2020, a proposed assault weapons ban failed in the Virginia Senate.[16] In April 2020, several new gun laws were enacted, including a requirement of background checks for private sales, a red flag law enabling Extreme Risk Protection Orders, a requirement to report lost or stolen guns, and the reinstating of a one-handgun-a-month law
Well, they did take down the traitors from the pedestals in Richmond. And a magnet school up in NoVa changed admission requirements to bring in more BIPOC students. So some nefarious force has got to be at work…
But, yeah: anything different or unknown to you or that unsettles your established mythical worldbuild - that’s a threat to “our way of life” that you must oppose. Period, end of discussion, take it on Faith Alone.
The Democrats, of course, true to form, continue having no counter to this other than “but, but that’s not what that really means!!!” while unable to explain why in language that does not require two semesters of sociology. And they wonder why they’ve got the poor OP on the ledge.
and while at it…
Also IIRC a mag-capacity limit also failed. But that’s the thing: the parts of the gun control package that that would have really pissed off more people the most, failed (probably out of someone in the Assembly realizing just that). So there was the need to reinforce the campaign with other Culture War issues, and CRT was right there.
I feel like this is what a lot of Democrats (here, other spaces, even in the media) are missing. Okay, let’s stipulate that CRT as a discipline is not being taught at the K-12 level. The important part is not the term but what people are using it as a symbol for. But it’s easy to try to shut down the conversation with “CRT isn’t being taught” and not engaging with what might be driving the discord.
Perhaps discussion is pointless. But now there’s an electorate that is saying in part “You want to make everything about identity? Fine, we’ll make everything about identity” (yes, yes, it has been, but now it’s active instead of passive) and are mobilizing along those lines.
What is it a symbol for, that’s actually happening in schools? Please provide cites that show more than one teacher here or there is doing something disagreeable. Thanks!
CRT is simply the wedge issue de jour. Remember Flag Burning? Remember Bathroom Bills? Remember Illegal Aliens (always a good go-to if you don’t have anything fresh)? War on Christmas? Antifa, BLM?
There is no answer, because there is no discussion. It’s classic made up bullsh*t straw-manning from the get-go.
The GOP, along with FOX and their ilk scream “BOOGA BOOGA BOO!” and the voters skee-daddle their flabby white fannies to the polls.
I’m not going to. The concept was that CRT is being used as a shorthand for whatever complaints, valid or invalid, people have. Saying “But that’s not CRT” allows one to dismiss the person entirely.
I’m not even arguing they have valid complaints in general. But if you want to smugly dismiss people for using a wrong term, don’t be surprised when they harden even further against you.
If Fox News was talking about how gremlins are getting into the schools and changing the textbooks, and people were disrupting school board meetings to insist that the school boards take care of the gremlin problem, what response would be appropriate in your mind?
The CRT “issue” is bullshit from top to bottom.
“I don’t think gremlins should be telling schools what they should teach."