“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said Wednesday that the Democratic Party was going to have to come to terms with its “wokeism” problem.
Scarborough discussed the topic, in the context of Republican Glenn Youngkin’s win in Virginia over Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, with cohost Mika Brzezinski, former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and journalist Katty Kay. (RELATED: ‘You Always Check’: Joe Scarborough Says ‘Rust’ Set Tragedy Occurred Because People Ignored Basic Gun Safety)
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“Here, you have a lot of people saying … and we need to talk about this around the table a good bit, because Democrats are going to have to come face to face with this issue of wokeism,” Scarborough began, saying that Democrats had to face the fact that “wokeism” was real and people did not only oppose it because they were racists.
“No, they’re lifelong Democrats, and they’re talking about what’s going on on college campuses. People can get mad if they want to. ‘Don’t shoot me,’ as Elton John said, ‘I’m only the piano player.’ This is what we’re hearing. All the time, wherever we go, when nobody is watching, when the cameras are off, when people aren’t worried about people calling them bigots, it’s happening. That played out last night in Virginia.”
Steele agreed, saying that if Democrats were going to insist that CRT was “not real” then they needed to craft a reasonable counter-narrative.
“If you’re making something up that’s not true, I’m going to just — I’m going to chase you all over the state, mock and ridicule you, and people will be laughing at you,” Scarborough continued. “The fact that he kept bringing this up, and Terry didn’t have an answer, other than to say parents shouldn’t be involved in their kids’ classrooms, oh, my God. This is real. If it’s not real, that’s just pure malpractice by Democrats from coast to coast.”
Kay jumped in then, saying that McAuliffe’s insistence that parents should not be involved in classrooms was “probably the worst mistake of his political career,” costing him a win.
“Democrats have to find a way in the post-George Floyd world, and as there is more wokeness on American campuses and in schools, Democrats have to find a way to talk about it rather than just saying that it doesn’t exist and it is not a problem,” Kay continued. “It’s a problem that hurt them last night. So they have to find a way.”
“It’s really hurting Democratic candidates, and it will continue to,” Scarborough agreed.