After Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia gubernatorial election on Tuesday, left-wing political analysts and personalities angrily claimed racism and white supremacy fueled the Republican Party's victorious night.
What was the reaction?
From declaring that caring about education is a racist dog whistle to claiming America "simply loves white supremacy," Democrats, progressives, and other left-wing personalities sought to blame McAuliffe's loss on anything but the Democratic agenda.- MSNBC host Joy Reid: "The exit polls showed that, which was interesting, that the Coronavirus or that the virus was a very low importance to many voters. It was 'education,' which is code for 'white parents don't like the idea of teaching about race.' And I mean, unfortunately, race is just the most palpable tool in the toolkit, it used to be of the Democratic Party back in the day when they were Dixiecrats and now of the Republican Party."
- Reid also said, "Republicans are dangerous" because the GOP stokes a "kind of soft white nationalism eventually leads to the hardcore stuff."
- "1619 Project" creator Nikole Hannah-Jones: "The only racial dog whistles in American politics are the ones heard by the media, because for the rest of the country it's explicit. If the only educational concern in the election was the teaching of race and racism, then the issue wasn't education: it was and is always RACE."
