Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist and the architect of the current CRT framing, has claimed a well-deserved victory: There’s no question that his efforts to supply a memorable name—critical race theory—for the series of semi-related, clumsy diversity initiatives and questionable curriculum choices in some public schools helped raise the salience of the issue.

But the other piece of the puzzle, undoubtedly, was public schools’ utter failure throughout the pandemic. Schools shutdown for months, offloading teacher duties to frustrated parents all over the country. The education system forced families to take more responsibility for educating kids. It catered to the every whim of teachers union leaders like American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, no matter how unreasonable, while kids and their parents were left to fend for themselves. It put public employees ahead of citizens and taxpayers. And it continued to subordinate the needs of families for more than a year. Even at present—long after it has become perfectly clear that COVID-19 is not a significant threat to children—many public schools in blue municipalities continue to force kids to wear masks. Some kids have to wear masks, even while playing sports outdoors.

What happened in the Virginia gubernatorial election is that a reckoning finally arrived. Parents rightly objected to the idea that they should assume more and more of the school system’s responsibilities but should not enjoy any authority. And they clearly blamed Democrats for taking the side of teachers unions: K-12 parents broke decisively for Youngkin.