Now progressives will counter that the backlash that may have helped carry Youngkin to victory (and it’s certainly only one factor among many) isn’t just about these texts and ideologies but about a broader discomfort with any tough truth-telling about America’s racist past, whether it takes the form of Toni Morrison novels or Norman Rockwell paintings. And they’re right that the anti-C.R.T. movement has combined a set of moderate and even liberal objections to the new progressivism — objections that show up in super-liberal New York as well as suburban Loudoun County, Virginia — with an older style of objections to talking about slavery and segregation at all.

But progressives can’t isolate and attack the second kind of objection unless they find a way to address the first kind as well, especially when it comes from voters (including minority voters) who may have supported Hillary Clinton or Biden but feel unsettled by the ideas filtering down into their kids’ classrooms in the last few years. And the McAuliffe approach isn’t going to cut it: You can tell people that C.R.T. is a right-wing fantasy all you want, but this debate was actually instigated not by right-wing parents but by an ideological transformation on the left.

So Democratic politicians may need to decide what they actually think about the ideas that have swept elite cultural institutions in the last few years. Maybe those ideas are worth defending. Maybe Kendi and DiAngelo are worth celebrating. Maybe school superintendents who recommend their work should be praised for doing so.