History will judge election night 2021 in one of two ways.

It was the moment the U.S. began its rightward shift, providing momentum for a Republican takeover of the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms.

Or, it forced a reckoning on the left that inspired Democrats to identify their shortcomings, rectify them, and hold on to power.

How Democrats explain the GOP’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race will be an early indication of which path the country will follow. In a state that Joe Biden won by more than 10 percentage points just 12 months ago, Republican Glenn Youngkin cruised to victory with more than seventy thousand votes to spare.

A popular narrative on the left assigns a sinister explanation to Youngkin’s surprising success: his use of racist dog whistles. Specifically, Youngkin and right-wing media turned Critical Race Theory, which is the idea that racism is baked into U.S. institutions and helps maintain white supremacy, into a top-of-mind issue even though Virginia’s secondary schools don’t include the academic framework in their curriculums.

Without a doubt, Youngkin manufactured a controversy over Critical Race Theory to animate the type of racial resentments that motivate some GOP voters. It’s unsavory and dishonorable.

But opponents of Critical Race Theory lost a slew of other elections on Tuesday night in places like Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Connecticut. And CRT wasn’t a central feature of the New Jersey governor’s contest, but that didn’t stop Republican Jack Ciattarelli from giving incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy a way closer race than predicted. So merely scaremongering on the topic is hardly a way to short-circuit the electorate.

In addition, Youngkin voters identified the economy as their most important issue. Yes, ‘education’ was second on their list, but that’s a catchall term that also includes dissatisfaction with remote learning and mask-wearing in schools.

In other words, it would be a grave, self-defeating mistake for Democrats to chalk up Youngkin’s win to racism. It would also be consistent with one of the left’s most obnoxious characteristics: prioritizing recriminations over self-reflection.

Because right now, those on the left have to be honest with themselves.

It starts at the top. It’s not unusual for a president to lose key elections in the first half of his term – since the 1970s, the party in power at the White House has lost all but one of Virginia’s governor’s races.

But Biden has done little to excite his base or win over independents. America’s botched exit from Afghanistan hurt Biden’s approval rating and its been on a consistent decline as he’s failed to gain support for major legislation on voting rights, police reform, immigration, infrastructure, or a social spending package that includes programs to expand health care, climate resiliency, education, and child care.

The instinct on the left is to blame the inertia in D.C. on the filibuster and the obstinance of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Ok, fine. But now what? At some point a prolonged period of catharsis becomes self-indulgent. Democrats should take what they can get and spend less time complaining about each other to the press. Because of their constant public bickering, even a historically large social spending bill will seem underwhelming.

Democrats would also be well served to stop dismissing bonafide problems as mere right-wing talking points. Take crime, for instance. Its rise in the past two years has impacted thousands of Americans and businesses. But liberals often give off the sense that the issue is overblown. The rise in the price of gas and groceries, likewise, doesn’t get the type of attention from Democrats that it deserves.

Which leads to a larger point: Democrats often seem out of touch with voters. This manifests itself in myriad ways. Left-leaning activists often shout down detractors in defense of deeply unpopular initiatives (like defunding the police, which was defeated in Minneapolis on Tuesday night). And while Virginia voters clearly signaled that they wanted to move on from Donald Trump – Youngkin strategically distanced himself from the former president during his campaign – Democrats seem hellbent on making him the central boogeyman in their attempt to win over voters.

There’s something else about Youngkin that underscores a problem for the left: he’s a new face. Democrats, on the other hand, not only ran a political lifer in Virginia – Terry McAuliffe was co-chairman of the Clinton campaign in 1996 – but the entire party is led by entrenched insiders. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been in Congress since the Reagan administration, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is on his fifth president, and Biden himself was first elected to the Senate in 1972.

Fresh faces and fresh ideas are in order.