RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/watch-winsome-searss-victory-speech/

As Alexandra DeSanctis pointed out this morning, progressives are still sticking to the racism narrative to explain their loss in Virginia last night. She notes that along with Glenn Youngkin, Virginians elected Winsome Sears, a black woman, as lieutenant governor and Jason Miyares, a Cuban American, as attorney general. She writes, “It’s hard to imagine why Virginians voting en masse for the GOP out of thinly veiled racial animus would throw in their lot with this ticket.”

It is indeed hard to imagine, yet progressives are imagining it anyway. They have an academic theory to justify it in critical race theory, which asserts that even if nobody is being intentionally racist, systems can still be racist. They view the modern Republican Party as supportive of (or at least sympathetic to) white supremacy, so Republicans’ winning, no matter what race they are, perpetuates white supremacy in a country that was, in progressives’ view, founded on prejudice and slavery.

If you accept the premises of the argument, there’s a certain logical sense to it. Of course, the premises of the argument are exactly what conservatives contest, and rightly so. This is not a racist country; it was not founded on slavery; and as David Harsanyi has written persuasively, the evidence shows it is the most tolerant place on earth. But in the context of academic theory, even very smart, evidence-driven people can come to believe some truly strange things.

The problem is that most voters don’t buy the theory.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/11/04/2021s-big-election-lesson-its-the-culture-stupid/

By any reasonable measure, Tuesday’s off-year elections around the country were a sweeping repudiation of the Democratic Party, as the defeat of Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe by virtually unknown Republican Glenn Youngkin shows. The donkey party’s extreme-left vision for America has suffered what could be a fatal blow, but only if the GOP is smart enough to take advantage of this great opportunity.

A quick look around the country on Wednesday morning led to an inescapable conclusion: Average Americans are fed up with the Democrats’ woke agenda and are eager to escape it.

After four years of Donald Trump, Americans in 2020 handed the reins of national government over to the Joe Biden Democrats. And what do they have to show for it?

Rising inflation, an unprecedented flood of 1.5 million illegal immigrants, radically politicized public education, soaring crime rates, the loss of our hard-won national energy independence, totalitarian federal government targeting concerned parents as possible “domestic terrorists,” the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan that left hundreds of Americans stranded, among many other things.

Wednesday’s headlines from the elections around the nation show just how badly the Dems fared:

Glenn Youngkin’s Win Officially Ends the Clinton Era in American Politics

Slate of conservative candidates declare victory in hotly contested Denver suburb school board race

Another Shocking Victory Happened in Texas Last Night and Suggests 2022 Doom for Democrats

Republicans made incredible gains in yesterday’s elections

Note to Dems: it’s not 2020 anymore

Incumbent Brown declares Buffalo mayor write-in win over socialist India Walton

Backfire: Minneapolis voters slam abolish-the-police proposal – and city council

Election day chaos: N.J. waits to see who will be governor while major upsets loom in Legislature

NY state ballot proposals demonstrate how badly Dems have misjudged public sentiments

We could go on, but you get the idea. Democrats did worse than expected across the country, while Republicans did better.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/halloween-comes-late-democrats-mcauliffe/

When a Republican wins in a reliably Democratic state, it’s big news. That’s exactly what happened in Virginia on Tuesday, where newcomer Glenn Youngkin defeated former governor Terry McAuliffe. Youngkin won even though McAuliffe had a well-oiled political machine and high name recognition, and was campaigning in a state Joe Biden won by 10 points only a year ago.

Yet all those advantages were for naught. The Commonwealth will have a Republican governor for the first time in over a decade. It is likely Republicans will win the other two statewide races as well, for lieutenant governor and attorney general. They could even win the House of Delegates, which had been under firm Democratic control.

For Democrats, fright night stretched beyond Virginia into New Jersey, where as of press time the incumbent Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, is struggling to keep his position. The race is still too close to call.

Since Democrats easily carried both states in the last presidential and gubernatorial races, these results must send a shiver through the party. The Virginia race was particularly important. To understand its implications for 2022, we need to understand how Youngkin won.

The key was independent voters, especially the suburban voters who rejected Trump in 2020. Youngkin persuaded many of them, as Trump could not. The vote also demonstrates that Virginians are none too pleased with the performance of Democrats, who control both the state and national governments.

McAuliffe’s loss shows his party cannot recapture those disaffected voters by constantly asserting that their every opponent is a Trump wannabe or white supremacist. Instead, what they should do is to break free of their far left and put forward a moderate agenda. And they have to deliver effective results on the ground. Yet so far, national Democrats have delivered only failure: inflation, onerous mandates, empty store shelves, racially divisive school lessons, and a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. Those are fierce headwinds for local candidates.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/leading-like-a-marine-in-virginia-11635962909?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

“There are some who want to divide us and we must not let that happen,” said Winsome Sears to a cheering crowd in Chantilly, Va., last night. Chandelis Duster of CNN reports:

Winsome Sears, a conservative Republican, will be Virginia’s next lieutenant governor, breaking barriers as the first female and the first woman of color in the office in the commonwealth’s 400-year legislative history.

Emma Colton at Fox News has more from the historic event:

“I’m telling you that what you are looking at is the American dream,” Sears said during her victory speech.

If a patriotic citizen tried to sketch out the perfect resume for a person to entrust with political power, the ideal biography might include service to country and community, an appreciation for America’s unique opportunities, practical experience in creating wealth, and an understanding of the challenges in preparing for future prosperity. Ms. Colton at Fox reports:

“When I joined the Marine Corps, I was still a Jamaican. But this country had done so much for me, I was willing, willing, to die for this country,” Sears said during her victory speech early Wednesday morning…
She immigrated to the United States from Jamaica as a child, and was the director of a Salvation Army homeless shelter prior to entering politics. She also owns an appliance and plumbing repair store in Virginia, and previously served as vice president of the Virginia Board of Education.

Ms. Sears does not think that public education should be a vehicle for political indoctrination. CNN’s Ms. Duster adds:

“We have a saying in church, ‘I may not be what I’m supposed to be, but I ain’t what I used to be.’ And that’s America,” Sears said. “We are not back in 1963, when my father arrived at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and things were very bad for us as Black people.”