WHEN LAUREN WINDSOR, a Democratic operative working with the Lincoln Project, sent five young people dressed in khakis, white shirts, and sunglasses to hold tiki torches in front of Glenn Youngkin’s campaign bus as it docked in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Friday, she never considered that people might think they were actual white supremacists.

The tiki torch stunt was meant to echo the far-right show of force in the city in 2017 and visually tie Youngkin’s campaign for the Virginia governorship with former President Donald Trump — a manifestation of Democrats’ ultimately doomed strategy not to attack Youngkin on his own terms but to tar him by his association with Trump. Instead, when local media painted the stunt as a real demonstration by white supremacists, and it was amplified by the campaign of Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former governor of the state, it spiraled out of control, with the Lincoln Project only claiming credit for it much later in the day.