king and isaac hayes were among the many artists who appeared on lee atwater's 1990 album "red hot & blue" but it was his day job that the soul music hobbyist really made his mark as the dark soul of the modern republican party. atwater was a preeminent political strategist who mastered and perfected the art of talking about race without talking about race. he did it in south carolina to a democratic congressional candidate named tom turnip seed. yes, that was his real name. by having phony push pollsters call up voters, white suburban voters to inform them turnipseed was a member of the naacp. that was a bad thing in his view and that was supposed to be the point. it was the lynchman of the strategy known as the southern strategy, the method by which republicans would increase their support among white voters by appealing to racial resentment and suspicion towards african americans, but they'd never do it directly or openly. that would lead to backlash. in 1981 atwater gave an infamous interview obtained about a decade ago by the nation magazine on the coded language republicans woul

going to where voters are, and to the critical race theory point, look, critical race theory is a lee atwaters trafficking in that undercurrent or using racism as a political currency to boost your turnout amongst a certain group. when you don't know how to talk about race, democrats, then republicans will fill that void. and what happened yesterday in virginia was that we didn't give particularly black voters a reason to come out in numbers that would have pushed or been able to offset the numbers -- >> but also independents, as well. you didn't give independents a reason to come out, as well. >> that's the larger point and so when i say that democrats have to do something, it's the same thing that was echoed today by tim kaine. it the same thing echoed today by james clyburn and the same thing that kind of sort of was echoed by joe manchin. still today we had a vote where we actually weren't able to pass voting rights reform and the white house came out and said the soul of the nation is at stake or something, blah, blah, blah, blah and didn't mention filibuster one time. so people are out

this is an old playbook going back to lee atwater. in the 2016 election we saw it done about crime.uburbs, they're going to destroy the suburbs. this type of fear mongering is how republicans traditionally shepherd white well back into the fold when hay stray to the democratic side. that is what was in play in virginia, and it will happen again. let's talk about one more environmental factor that benefited republicans which may not exist in 2020. they needed president trump to stay off of the stage -- molly: there's one more thing i want to get to -- >> so there were a lot of parents that would argue that crt was taught in virginia schools -- [inaudible conversations] >> toni nebraska morrison is not crt. molly: i want to move to the defund police issue as well because that seemed to have had an impact on tuesday. very quickly, did it have an imimpact on tuesday, and what are the messages going forward as various candidates start to make their play for the hid termsesome laura? >> well, i think all of those issues had an impact. you have to look at it and say, yes. that said, when y

this is the new lee atwater strategy and it's going to be used over and over and over again. >> i rarely disagree with him on this. this. the only reason that we're talking about critical race theory is because glenn youngkin had 18 months to convince people that he was not a fire-breathing horns out of his skull racist. this only -- you can only talk about critical race theory if you present yourself as the kind of neutral white guy, i don't dislike brown people, i just think this is going a little too far. so it only works if you've been able to present yourself as neutral or non-hostile on race issues. that's not something that a lot of republicans are very good at. and i saw somebody put this very eloquently online. they said look, you know, glenn youngkin ran pretending to be larry hogan. he's going to govern like ron dewynne. but to his base they think he's ron desantis. and that's what this is. it was a very sneaky triangulation. because if you run on critical race theory and you're a screaming maga hat-wearing maniac then you're going to lose those suburban people because they do

lee atwater, wherever he is, is smiling.ern strategy, the race-based political ideology and politics of identity, that the republicans ran in virginia, was a master class. and i think the combination of the master class of identity politics, plus the ineptitude of congressional democrats, led to glenn youngkin to pull this off. >> this is a messaging problem for democrats. if democrats messaged it properly, they could have gotten it across. >> we haven't done anything right. >> here's what was a success for the youngkin campaign. he started out in this race making sure that the people of virginia understood who he was. he demonstrated that he showed them that he cared. people don't care -- aren't concerned with what you know until they know you care. once he conveyed that to him, that was a key emphasis. he wasn't focused on the issues. he was focused on jobs, the pocketbook issues, education. >> anytime you say you're going to ban critical race theory, is something that glenn youngkin doesn't know what it is. it is not taug