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I try not to copy WV MetroNews Talkline host Hoppy Kercheval, who writes a column Monday through Friday. Yet, we sometimes land on the same idea.
In his Thursday column, Hoppy wrote about lessons West Virginia can learn from Virginia, where the governor's office flipped to a Republican for the first time in a decade and where their House of Delegates came to a 50-50 tie after Democrats took the majority two years ago.
There are definitely lessons to be learned here in West Virginia, and Hoppy focused his column on the lessons Democratic lawmakers and politicos can learn. While it was a good day for Republicans and a bad day for progressives, it doesn't mean that there are no lessons for Republicans to learn.
Republican Glenn Youngkin was able to defeat Terry McAuliffe, former Democratic National Committee chairman and former Virginia governor, by not disavowing former president Donald Trump while also not bear-hugging Trump either.
As a result, Youngkin was able to get back the suburban moderate voters who tend to lean center-left or center-right but gave their votes to President Joe Biden in 2020 because Trump antics became just too much regardless of some of the good that occurred between 2017 and 2020.
Some of the lessons taken by Republicans in West Virginia in the wake of 2020 is the perception that one needs to throw red meat to the party base, which almost always tends to be at the fringes politically.
West Virginia very quickly became a red state for sure, and probably the most pro-Trump state in the nation. And a lot of what drives the agenda for lawmakers comes from whatever is getting the most attention on Fox News. Yet, as Virginia shows, you get a lot more turnout by focusing on issues that have broad support across the political spectrum.
In Virginia, it was education broadly. Sure, some of the education focus had to do with some school districts engaging in wokeness philosophies dealing with making young white children feel bad for being born a certain color, but the state's handling of education during the COVID-19 pandemic upset a lot of parents regardless of political ideology.
In an article Wednesday in The Atlantic, Zachary Carter details some of the educational issues that brought Trump conservatives and suburban moderates - even center-left Democratic voters - together for Youngkin.
"The unraveling began at the schools," Carter wrote. "COVID-19 has been terrible for everyone, and it has been especially hard on parents. Unpredictable school closures didn't just screw up parents' work schedules; they drove millions of parents, including 3 million women, out of the workforce altogether. Remote learning doesn't work well for most kids and has been accompanied by rising levels of depression and anxiety among students."
"From April to October last year, the nationwide share of doctor visits that were related to mental health spiked 24 percent for kids ages 5 to 11, and 31 percent for kids ages 12 to 17," Carter said. "Existing disparities in learning got worse, with the biggest hits coming to kids with disabilities, kids from low-income families, and kids from Black and Latino families--all demographics that Democrats expect to do well with at the ballot box."
These are issues that everyone faces, not just certain political demographics. Too often, especially in West Virginia over the last year, lawmakers have tried to appease the base instead of offering solutions that affect a broad percentage of the population. Take the COVID-19 vaccine religious/exemption bill passed during the most recent special session. It largely does nothing, but it's meant to show the base that they're listening.
So candidates preparing for 2022: find issues that affect many people broadly and focus on forward-looking solutions and you too can ignore Trump and Youngkin.
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By the way, I chose to use the word "wokeness" instead of "critical race theory" or CRT because both those on the far right and the progressive left have ruined that phrase to the point that it doesn't really mean what either side wants it to mean.
It's supposed to be a master's level legal philosophy dealing with the role of race in various institutions and systems. It's hard to deny that some systems that have been in place for decades and even the last 100 or 200 years have some racism baked into how they operate. Under that definition, progressives are right in saying that CRT is not being taught in K-12 schools. It's largely something college students learn in law school.
But the problem is the conservative right latched onto the CRT phrase and use it as a grab bag for many racial philosophies that are being taught in schools even if they're not officially part of any curriculum. And progressives can say with a straight face that CRT isn't being taught, even though philosophies based on CRT certainly have been taught.
And before someone says something: of course, the history of slavery and abuses of minority and indigenous groups should be taught. Our ancestors did many good things and many bad things, and we must learn from both. But I can also understand why some parents who have raised their children to treat everyone the same would be upset if some teacher pulls their child aside and tells them they are an oppressor because of their less-than-tan skin color.
Again, though, you're seeing these CRT fights in more suburban areas. I'd be surprised if CRT philosophies are being pushed in even 1% of West Virginia schools. Yet, don't be surprised to see legislation in 2022 to ban CRT despite its near non-existence in the state simply because someone got worked up watching a Fox News segment about the subject.
(Adams is the state government reporter for Ogden Newspapers. He can be contacted at sadams@newsandsentinel.com)