Yesterday the NY Times published an editorial warning Democrats that now is not the moment for a grand progressive revolution. The whole thing reads like an extended argument against the expansive version of the reconciliation bill that Bernie Sanders has been demanding for months:

For many voters — especially those who don’t vote regularly — the 2020 election was about removing Mr. Trump from the White House. It was less about policy or ideology. Mr. Biden did not win the Democratic primary because he promised a progressive revolution. There were plenty of other candidates doing that. He captured the nomination — and the presidency — because he promised an exhausted nation a return to sanity, decency and competence. “Nobody elected him to be F.D.R.,” Representative Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, told The Times after Tuesday’s drubbing. “They elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”

Democrats should work to implement policies to help the American people. Congress should focus on what is possible, not what would be possible if Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and — frankly — a host of lesser-known Democratic moderates who haven’t had to vote on policies they might oppose were not in office.

That’s the big message coming out of Tuesday, i.e. progressives need to dial back their ambitions and sideline some of their activists if they want to stop losing. But there’s also a counterpoint to that, a message about what works for Republicans and how they can win. And, unfortunately, I think the left-leaning media is deforming reality around that second message.

If you’ve been on Twitter or turned on MSNBC this week, you’ve heard a lot about Republicans scamming voters with a bogus story about CRT in schools. That claim is a debating tactic. It’s true that K-12 students aren’t literally being handed CRT textbooks in schools, but progressives are using that fact to obscure another more salient one: That teachers, unions and administrators are warming up to a left-wing ideology on race which tracks with the anti-racism coming from Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. It’s not CRT proper, it’s a kind of CRT derivative which really is making its way into schools. We got some first-hand testimony about that yesterday.

But it turns out that the focus on CRT was only one part of a larger message on education that was coming out of Youngkin’s campaign. Think of it as Youngkin’s campaign message as filtered through bitter progressives who are looking for something to rant about. Today Politico published an interview with two of Glenn Youngkin’s top campaign strategists, Kristin Davison and Jeff Roe. They explained their broader strategy on the issue of education.

Jeff Roe: In education: some people get animated about CRT [critical race theory]; some people get animated about school choice; some people get animated about advanced math; some people get animated about school resource officers. People get animated about different features of education depending on where you are physically, geographically, and the age of your kids. And it also depends on your demographic makeup.

If you’re an Asian-American family going to Thomas Jefferson School and they lower the standards to let in more kids who aren’t in accelerated math into the best school in the country, that’s pretty important to you. Advanced math is a big dang thing. But it also is to the Republicans: Why would you not help and want your children to succeed and achieve? So we were having a hard time; those people don’t fit in the same rooms together. You know, having school-choice people in the same room with a CRT person with an advanced math [person] along with people who want school resource officers in every school — that’s a pretty eclectic group of people.

Terry McAuliffe said it better than we ever could have: He wanted to restrict the parents’ involvement in their children’s education. When he said that, then we could say, “Parents matter. Terry wants the government in between you and your child’s life.” And then it spoke to everybody. We didn’t have to explain it to anyone, because they heard what they wanted to hear in that message…

Kristin Davison: I think what you’re seeing on Fox News — when there’s someone with a bit of fire coming out of their ears over CRT — we weren’t seeing that as much on the ground, and we weren’t adjusting what we were doing on the ground when we would see that on TV.

What we were seeing was real parents [concerned about education] — and not just the parents that go to the Republican “Lincoln Day” dinner every year. These were parents who probably haven’t voted in years, [and] Democrats and independents in the bluest parts of the state — Arlington and Alexandria. And it’s because the fight on the ground wasn’t about CRT or this “culture war.”

You had two choices. Glenn and our message was that we believe parents should be involved and have a say — and not just on school safety, but on standards, not just on one specific issue. Terry and Democrats had framed it so that teachers unions and political agendas would have a bigger role in your child’s education than you do. And that’s a powerful message, and it’s very different and deeper than just a CRT message…

That’s the fight that we saw on the ground. That was the message that we were pushing. That’s why immediately — I think within three hours of the debate where Terry said “I don’t think parents should be involved in what the school should be teaching” — we had a video out hitting this because it tapped into just parents not knowing. And *that* was the fight. It wasn’t just CRT. That’s an easier issue to talk about on TV. That’s not what we focused on here; it was more “parents matter.” Launching that message took the education discussion to a different level.

So, contrary to what people are hearing from Joy Reid, this wasn’t a one-note message about CRT. If Republicans go into 2022 thinking they can run on that one issue and win, they are probably going to be disappointed. The real winning issue is the one that sweeps up all of the angst parents feel about the last 18 months of school closures and zoom school and unions keeping classrooms closed and school security and ending competitive admissions and, on top of all of that, CRT.

The big picture here is that Americans got a really close look at how schools, school boards and school administrators work over the past 18 months and many of them are not pleased with what they saw. That’s a big opportunity for Republicans like Glenn Youngkin who can wrap all of that together with the simple but powerful message “Parents matter.”

Maybe you’re thinking Democrats will be able to fend off that message now that they know it’s coming. Here’s why I don’t think so. Terry McAuliffe clearly had some sense his ship was sinking in the month before the election and knew education was part of his problem and yet he closed his campaign by holding a rally with Randi Weingarten. Why would you do that?

Put another way, why not take the NY Times‘ advice and dial the revolution back a bit? The answer is that Democrats are joined at the hip to all of these things. They can’t walk away from teacher’s unions or anti-racist activists. They can’t suddenly embrace competitive admissions or standardized testing or admit that some CRT complaints have a point, not without getting a stern lecture from Ibram Kendi and his fans.

So the fact that Democrats now know what’s coming doesn’t change the landscape at all. They are still the same smug technocrats who, in their hearts, believe leftist unions and radical activists should be the ones making decisions about education with as little interference from parents as possible. That’s who they are and they aren’t going to change over the next 12 months. And that means the message on education that worked this week will work just as well next year.

And if Democrats do somehow manage to muzzle their unions and their leftist activists enough to counter counter the GOP, that will be its own form of victory.