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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. We spent a lot of time on the show yesterday and on Wednesday asking what just happened that the Democrats did as badly as they did in Virginia, New Jersey, Long Island, and elsewhere. We'll begin today with a take from New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie on how the Democrats might learn from the results to hold the House and Senate in next year's election, but with an eye on Bill Clinton in the '90s, the moral price they might pay to get there.

Jamelle also wrote a column about one thing that cannot be taken away despite the racial moral panic campaign that seems to have carried the day in the Virginia governor's race. This is not a take from the New York Times building in Times Square, we might say. Jamelle lives in Charlottesville. Is also with the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia there. He's also a CBS News political analyst. Jamelle, we always learn a lot when you come on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jamelle Bouie: Oh, thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with what you call the moral panic against critical race theory promoted by Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin who is now the governor-elect of Virginia. Can you describe why you use that term 'moral panic, and why you conclude that Youngkin and his allies have already lost that battle even though they won the election.

Jamelle Bouie: I call it a moral panic because there doesn't seem to be a ton of actual content behind the complaints, and the complaint range, it's shooting from the most reasonable end. You have complaints about diversity trainings, corporate diversity trainings, maybe diversity trainings for teachers in administration. Then on the end of things that sounds to me frankly incredible, and I mean incredible in the literal sense of the word in and credible are claims like pre-school teachers teaching two, three-year-old white children to hate themselves.

Elementary school teachers teaching Black students that they are victims. I happen to be married to a teacher. I happen to spend a lot of time around teachers, and it just doesn't jive with my experience of educators or teachers. I would bet you that if you could somehow do a survey of classrooms in the Commonwealth you would find that these claims are if not untethered from reality, then certainly overblown. What is the case is that there is real anxiety about the shifting way that people talk about race and racism.

About the way that at least in some corners of our culture, and there's a parenthetical I want to make here. I think that the extent to which so many commentators who speak about this live into big liberal cities maybe covers their sense of what is normal and common in large parts of the country. It's certainly the case, like in rural Virginia it was quite uncommon to talk about race and racism in ways that presumed that there was something wrong with American society.

As we saw last year at the George Floyd protest there were a lot of young people who because of I'd say much more the media they consume and the peer group they have and their exposure to the internet much more than their teachers and educators have imbibed some of that thinking and are expressing it. It scares their parents. This is in Virginia where we have a history of big controversies over race and education, the paramount one being massive resistance integration. To my mind, this looks more like something a little less major than that.

It looks like the early '90s panic over the spread of gangster hip-hop, gangster rap to white suburbia. This fear of white children, teenagers, preteens really not just observing Black culture and Black ideas that come out of Black culture and Black people, but really internalizing them.

Brian Lehrer: How much. [crosstalk] Oh go ahead finish the thought.

Jamelle Bouie: No that's the thought I was just going to keep on going.

Brian Lehrer: Well, my crack team of Jamelle Bouie biographical researchers came up with the fact that you were a school child in Virginia Beach in the '90s and early 2000s. Assuming that's accurate, how do you remember being taught about the history of racism, and how differently do you think it is taught around the state today? How much has it shifted?

Jamelle Bouie: That's accurate. We moved to Virginia. My parents were in the military, and so we moved to Virginia in 1994, and I was in grade school, middle school, high school from-- 1994 when I was in first grade to when I graduated in high school in 2005. I remember a few things. The first is that I remember we celebrated Lee–Jackson–King Day until-- I think that was a very recent change to Virginia's calendar of holidays. On Martin Luther King Day, there'd also be pictures and portraits of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson as part of the people who we're celebrating on that day.

I do not recall getting a ton of education about the civil war and reconstruction and slavery other than that these are things that happened. Even in high school, much of my history education was either pre-18th century or 20th century, but the 19th century is a big blank spot as far as education went. My experience of race and racism in school had much less to do with educators, and much more to do with my peers. We lived in-- Virginia Beach is predominantly white city. We lived in a part of the city that was predominantly white, but not overwhelmingly so.

My classmates were largely white, but again not overwhelmingly. I, from a very young age remember people saying racist things to me. From seven and eight up until I graduated from high school. One thing that's frustrated me about this conversation-- and I pivot from my own biography which I don't really find that interesting. One thing that frustrated me about this education is that so much of the questions are when should students begin learning about race and racism. There's an implicit white there, because students of color, Black students, Hispanic students, Asian American students they learn about race and racism very early on because they experience it.

They experience racism very early on, and then their parents have to explain it to them. My parents had to explain why people were being mean to me, because of the way I looked. My strong view here is that if a seven-year-old Black child has to experience that, then their white peers should at least have to learn about it. Not in any crazy sophisticated way, but in a way that lets them know that these things are real. I suspect that what is animating some of the anxiety here is that these kids are then asking their parents about this, and their parents have to answer difficult and uncomfortable questions.

[crosstalk] I want to sympathize with that, but also at a certain point, I don't.

Brian Lehrer: Now that Youngkin has won with this morally panicked overcritical race theory that exists or doesn't exist white majority. How do you think that might play out on the ground during his administration? Different from what we heard as election campaign rhetoric since presumably, they won't stop teaching the history of slavery and Jim Crow, or some of the things more newly being brought toward mainstream teaching like Juneteenth and the Tulsa Massacre and 1619 as an important turning point.

Jamelle Bouie: This is the thing I've been really wrestling with myself, because Youngkin's campaign rhetoric itself kind of did this thing. It was a very effective thing obviously, but it was to say, "We are not going to not teach the ugly stuff in American history." On a practical level in a state like Virginia, you can't. I think I said this in one of the pieces you quoted from, but it is impossible to teach the state's history in even the most neutral way without a knowledge of race and racism there.

On a practical level, you to say that thing, but then he would pivot to saying , "We're going to get CRT out of schools." It is unclear it to me what that exactly even means. Given that the governor's office doesn't actually have a ton of influence over curriculum, and given that Virginia Democrats still retain control of the Senate, I don't think the state is going to see any of the laws that have been passed in much more conservative places like Tennessee or Texas. My hunch is that this might empower localities.

Certainly, individual school districts to adjust their curriculums to remove material from their curriculums. I have a sense that there's not going to be any real practical changes in the actual administration of things. No major significant changes, because of course, Virginia students, they take AP exams. They take IB exams, they attend world-class universities in the state. You can't actually just erase this stuff in the curriculum through the students.

Brian Lehrer: Right. They have to know stuff.

Jamelle Bouie: They have to know stuff. The last point I'll say, and this relates to Trump. I think Trump did, and I think this was a politically clever thing, was he would run on something and not actually do anything about it, but then people he did something about it. People would be like, "Okay, that checks out." I think Younkin might do something similar. I think six months from now he'll give a speech and say, "We've done the CRT out of schools." This may mean literally nothing practically, but people will believe it because he said it.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and I would predict, they'll find individual lines in teacher diversity trainings and things like that to gin up the moral outrage over again. Use those as flashpoints to keep the conversation alive to their political advantage, even while the larger teaching that you described goes on. We'll see if that happens. Jamelle Bouie, New York Times columnist is my guest. Looking ahead to the 2022 midterms, you wrote a column last month about a central demographic divide being much discussed in democratic circles right now, that a crucial determinant of who votes democratic and who votes republican these days is education.

The college-educated vote for the dems, the non-college-educated, especially among white and Latino men, and that this intersects with racial resentment as a driving political force. Can you describe that demographic challenge and that intersection as you see it in the context of 2022?

Jamelle Bouie: Yes, I think in Virginia, the education gap widened, Younkin made huge ground with white woman without a college degree, which is a good bet. I believe Biden only lost narrowly and then Younkin won overwhelmingly. I think New Jersey as well, you saw these education based-shifts, non-college-educated voters shifting further to republicans. I expect this to continue next year. It's an interesting question why this is the case. One popular theory is that democrats are too "woke" which is something that, again, it seems like something you say if you aren't really familiar with how politics operates in most of the rest of the country.

I don't really see any evidence of that beyond maybe urban centers on the coast. It's possible right that the nationalization of politics means that even that has just a big impact on how ordinary voters understand these things. My sense of it is that as the Democratic Party has taken on more and more college-educated people, separate and apart from the nature of new language about race or gender or anything. I think there is just a sense that the Democratic Party might become-- Its image might be about very educated people.

I do think there's something to that. I think if you look at candidate selection, if you look at the candidates that are put out, when Democrats look for veterans, they'll tend to look for former enlisted people. They tend to gravitate towards officers who are highly educated. The Democratic Party isn't really fielding nurses, isn't really fielding former construction workers, isn't really fielding non-college-educated candidates. Whereas the Republican Party is at least fielding business people. I think this is something that's just generally underrated, which is that many Americans, most Americans maybe even, they admire business people.

They want to be prosperous. They want to have that kind of independence. They admire that kind of independence. I wonder, I don't suspect, I wonder if part of what the Republican Party has happened on to with Trump in particular, with Trump being a very prominent business person who didn't necessarily run on tax cuts. What they've happened on to is a plug into what you might call the producerism that really has a lot of force in American politics. That you want to aspire to being a producer of things, an owner of things, an entrepreneur.

I think that really appeals to people in a lot of communities and people that appeals to-- I'll speak from experience here. My best friend growing up, his dad was a construction worker, and his mother was a hairdresser and his sister had kids a little early and was in community college and was getting her degree in order to open her own business. Many of his aunts, uncles, and such did own their own businesses. This wasn't a mixed family of immigrants, non-immigrants. Aspiring to owning one's business was an important thing.

I think the Republican Party has maybe plugged into that in a potent way, in a way that the Democratic Party hasn't.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. That column of yours from last month is called, Bill Clinton, Race and the Politics of the 1990s. You set up the idea that he faced some similar political questions trying to win the presidency for the Democrats after 12 years of Reagan and HW Bush. Maybe it's no surprise that after this week's election, Clinton's main political adviser from those days, James Carville, said this on PBS about the way back to victory next year.

James Carville: Some of these people need to go to a woke detox center or something. Their expression of language that people just don't use, and there's a backlash and a frustration at that. Don't just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Washington. This defund the police lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln's name off of schools, people see that.

Brian Lehrer: Jamelle, your reaction to that. At the beginning of the clip, I think I was talking over it. He said woke detox Democrats need to go for.

Jamelle Bouie: Right. It's this thing where if you are hyper plugged into every single little controversy that happens, this might sound persuasive, but thinking practically, who are the Democratic candidates who are speaking in this manner? Not Terry McAuliffe, not Phil Murphy. Who are the actual Democratic candidates who are speaking in this matter? Who are the actual Democratic candidates, politicians, anyone who is calling to defund the police? There's this thing that's happening, this slipperiness from, I think, analysts who are just hostile to progressives to begin with.

In which the action of college students are conflated with elected officials, in which hyperlocal controversies over a statue become [unintelligible 00:17:42] for an entire political movement. When national commentators take this stuff and hype it up, of course, they're going to create the impression that it's a pervasive thing when very clearly, it's not. I would say that insofar that anyone needs to get some perspective, it might be people like Carville, and maybe instead of proclaiming that there needs to be a "woke detox," maybe there needs to be a detox of the kind of corporate, not even moderate, but bland candidates that the Democratic Party is fielding.

Glenn Youngkin, for whatever, he excited people, and Tara McAuliffe did not. If you begin to look down the line, you're looking at candidates who didn't really excite people. A counterpoint to this is the Georgia special, where the top vote-getter in the runoff was Raphael Warnock, who, I guess by some accounts, might be woke, a Black preacher from a Black church. By other accounts, I think it's a kind of candidate Democrats should be looking for. Someone who has-- Even if he's well-educated, does not have a college-educated aspect, someone who can clearly speak to people.

Who can speak naturally and speak clearly to non-college-educated people who can communicate values strongly and who can excite people. I think if you can find more candidates like that, you'd have better luck, but looking at the loss of Terry McAuliffe, and then concluding that the problem is too much wokeness, just seems ludicrous to me.

Brian Lehrer: There's a way to stop the bleeding. You posed in that column. You only asked the question in the column, I think you started to answer it just now, about whether there is a way to stop the bleeding with non-college whites and Hispanics without pandering to the worst forms of racial conservatism. You're saying maybe it's by having more exciting candidates who do appeal to people's true beliefs and interests. By the way, I know you got to go in a minute. Any thoughts about the place of Eric Adams and all this elected now to be mayor of New York, who is Black, of course, and also ideologically hard to pin down?

Jamelle Bouie: Yes. [laughs] I'm not that comfortable with New York. [unintelligible 00:20:15] New York probably might be a little fascinated by Eric Adams as this candidate. I think this is not an insult to Adams. It's just an observation. I think it's true of Trump as well. This ability for people to project whatever they want to believe onto him, and sense that he believes that as well. I think his forthrightness openness is-- I don't know, he gives the impression in a lot of ways of just being like a guy that you might know.

I think that's politically very appealing. I don't know if someone of Eric Adams his exact profile would do well every single race, but that general thing as a guy that you might know

This is what, to go back to Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, very much identified himself as. Yes, he's a wealthy former hedge fund manager who owns a massive property in the middle of Virginia, but he really tried to create the impression that he might just be a guy that you might know. A guy that you might run into, versus candidates that I think Democrats have been fielding unsuccessfully.

If there's any lessons drawn from Adams it's that, look for people who might be relatable, which is both cliche. It's like an age-old adage of American politics, but also something still worth taking to heart.

Brian Lehrer: From Charlottesville, Virginia, New York Times columnist, Jamelle Bouie, whose Twitter bio includes the line "I don't live in New York".

Jamelle Bouie: [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Jamelle, always so interesting and insightful. Thank you very, very much for your time.

Jamelle Bouie: Thank you for having me.

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