Democrat strategist James Carville blames 'stupid wokeness' for Virginia ...

Democrat strategist James Carville has blamed 'stupid wokeness' for his party's shock election defeat in Virginia where Joe Biden had won by 10 points just last year.

Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated former incumbent Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, while in New Jersey, Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy narrowly retained his seat with a razor thin margin.

Carville, who was the lead strategist for Bill Clinton's successful presidential campaign, told PBS Newshour: 'What went wrong is this stupid wokeness. All right? 

'Don't just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis. Even look at Seattle, Washington. I mean, this Defund the Police lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln's name off of schools, that — people see that.

'Some of these people need to go to a woke detox center or something. They're expressing language that people just don't use. And there's a backlash and a frustration at that.'

The political consultant, nicknamed the Ragin' Cajun, said Youngkin won by letting Democrats 'pull the pin and watch the grenade go off on them'.

With 99 per cent of the votes counted, Youngkin has secured 50.9 per cent while McAuliffe lags behind on 48.4 per cent. 

Carville said: 'We have got to change this and not be about changing dictionaries and change laws.  

'I have got news for you. You're hurting the party. You're hurting the very people that you want to help. 

'Terry [McAuliffe] got caught up. He's a good friend of mine. He's a good guy. He got caught up in something national, and we have got to change this internally, in my view.'

Before the result, Carville warned McAuliffe would lose the race when the governor said he did not believe parents should tell schools how to teach children.

Carville's comments were echoed by Van Jones who dragged Democrats for living in their own 'echo chamber' and not connecting with voters.

Jones said: 'I think that the Democrats are coming across in ways that we don't recognize that are annoying and offensive and seem out of touch in ways that I don't think show up in our feeds when we're looking at our kind of echo chamber, and I think it's a message here.'  

Jones said that the country is not seeing an official left wing or right wing wave, but that it’s a ‘turbulent and volatile period’ and that ‘Democrats have to look in the mirror now.’ 

Meanwhile former Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on Wednesday warned fellow Democrats that the GOP cannot become 'the party of the parents'.

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Youngkin's victory, which was a catastrophic defeat for Democrats, led Cutter to conclude: 'We cannot let it go.' 

'The one thing that we need to make sure of is that Republicans in 2022 don’t become is the party of parent, because we need to be the party of the parents,' Cutter told MSNBC on Wednesday in a video tweeted out later in the day.

'And we are. We're the ones that care about school funding. We're the ones that care about making sure parents can send their kids to school because they have jobs to go to. All of this. We need to own that agenda. We cannot let it go.'

A handful of political analysts cited a united parental front in Virginia as a reason behind Younkin's unlikely win against McAuliffe, who had previously served as the state's governor from 2014 to 2018.

In particular, parents rallied behind the opposition to critical race theory (CRT) being taught in their children's classrooms, with confrontations with local school boards on the subject becoming more and more commonplace - and even violent - in recent weeks.