Youngkin’s victory is a kind of road map that other Republicans can use to run successful campaigns over the coming years. To respond effectively, Democrats will have to stop dismissing concerns over curricular content as “fake outrage.”

That leaves Democrats with two principal options. They could defend the need to teach students ideas that are rooted in critical race theory, arguing that an unrelentingly bleak view of American history or a depiction of contemporary America as still defined by omnipresent forms of structural racism are accurate reflections of reality. Personally, I have substantive disagreements with this view as well as deep concerns about how popular such a message is likely to prove. But an open defense of the need to make radical changes to the way students are taught about the history and the nature of their country would at least stand a chance of persuading some voters and have the virtue of treating them like adults.

Alternatively, Democrats could become more willing to disavow curricular content that is incendiary or misguided. Exercises that ask elementary-school students to rate themselves on a scale of privilege or presentations that imply that Black people are somehow less interested in the written word may be relatively rare. But voters who worry about them are much more likely to be reassured by politicians who are willing to condemn them than by those who pretend they don’t exist. Doing so is both right and expedient.