Should Glenn Youngkin’s margin hold up in Virginia, which at this time on Wednesday morning appears to be a near certainty, it’s completely unclear what he will do as governor other than exercise his fear of children’s books. The shallowness of Youngkin’s campaign seems to be a strong indicator that all those Republican think tanks were right when they seized on the completely fabricated threat of “critical race theory” to lead them into the coming cycle. Certainly there has been frustration over the lingering epidemic, and the “supply chain crisis” that has occasionally deprived a family of their favorite toilet paper. However, Youngkin’s victory can be neatly explained by an enormous shift in a single demographic: According to NBC News, white women without a college degree made a 19% swing to the GOP side when compared to the presidential race a year earlier.  Just as Russia actually devoted far more of its effort to increasing racial tension rather than into directly promoting Trump, Republican leadership understands that race remains an incredibly potent lever for motivating their white base. That’s especially true with the “poorly uneducated” voters for whom Trump declared his love. Looking not just at Virginia but at situations like that in Southlake, Texas, where a school board election positioned Republicans to kill the school’s plans for teaching about racial diversity, it’s hard not to come away with a clear indication that malignant racism and white fear remain a ready source of votes for anyone willing to tap that ugly vein. And yet … maybe it would be wise not to read Virginia as such a definitive verdict on anything at all. After all, this is the eighth time in a row that an incoming president has been followed with an opposition party win in the Virginia governorship. Those victories have had absolutely no power to predict the outcome of elections that followed. And there’s an even better reason to keep our chins up when it comes to defeating the electoral power of racism. As USA Today reports, people of color won races across the country, including several historic firsts. Read more