Jon Reisman

Muttley Post-Election Notes
Muttley was a Hanna Barbera animated character, the sidekick/foil of Dick Dastardly. Muttley was infamous for his snickering, rasping laugh, usually unleashed after some Dastardly shenanigans backfired and foiled his plans. I could hear Muttley’s laugh as Terry McCauliffe and his dastardly Democrat campaigning compadres (Obama, Biden, cackling Kamala, Stacey Abrams and the Critical Race Theory (it’s not taught, but it’s awesome!) toting teachers unions crashed and burned in Virginia.

The lefty media meltdown at MSNBC (Joyless Reid) and CNN (Van Jones, Nicole Wallace) was must watch TV made for Muttley snickers. The left claimed that Virginia voters, most especially suburban white women, had fallen for a white supremacist racist dog whistle campaign focused on an imaginary Trumped up and nonexistent obscure legal theory which wasn’t being taught in Virginia, although it was prominently endorsed on the Virginia Department of Education web page and prominently practiced, promoted and defended by lying school boards, superintendents and teachers.

The fact that the white supremacist Virginia voters elected Republican Glenn Youngkin to succeed bedsheet adorned and blackface wearing Democrat Ralph Northam was conveniently ignored, as was the selection of Jamaican  immigrant and marine veteran Winsome Sears as the Lieutenant Governor. Sears succeeds a Democrat credibly accused of sexual assault, which apparently is no longer OK in Virginia, even for Democrats.  Those racist, sexist Virginia voters also installed a Cuban-American as Attorney General and gave the Republicans control of the Virginia House of Delegates.

The Lieutenant Governor-Elect gave an electric acceptance speech:
“I’m telling you that what you are looking at is the American dream. The American dream. When my father came to this country — August 11th of 1963 — he came at the height of the civil rights movement from Jamaica. He came, and I said to him, “But it was such a bad time for us. Why did you come?” And he said, “Because America was where the jobs and the opportunities were.” And he only came with $1.75 — one dollar and seventy-five cents — took any job he could find, and he put himself through school and started his American dream. Now he’s comfortably retired. Then, he came and got me when I was 6 years old. And when I stepped on that Pan Am Boeing 737 and landed at JFK, I landed in a new world. So let me tell you this: I am not even a first-generation American. When I joined the Marine Corps, I was still a Jamaican. But this country had done so much for me, I was willing to die for this country.

And so I say to you, victory indeed. But I say to you, there are some who want to divide us, and we must not let that happen. They would like us to believe we are back in 1963 when my father came. We can live where we want. We can eat where we want. We own the water fountains. We have had a black president elected not once but twice. And here I am, living proof.
In case you haven’t noticed, I am black, and I have been black all my life. But that’s not what this is about. What we are going to do is we are going to now be about the business of the commonwealth. We have things to tend to. We are going to fully fund our historically black colleges and universities.…We’re going to have safer neighborhoods, safer communities, and our children are going to get a good education. Because education lifted my father out of poverty, education lifted me out of poverty, education will lift us all out of poverty because we must have marketable skills so that our children cannot just survive, but they will thrive, and they will create generational wealth. That’s what this is about.

I’m going to finish up… It’s a historic night. Yes, it is, but I didn’t run to make history, I just wanted to leave it better than I found it. And with your help, we’re going to do that. We’re going to have transparent government. And as I used to say as we were on the trail: Hold on, Virginia, help is on the way! The cavalry has arrived. Thank you, God bless you.

Finally, I want to thank my staff because I couldn’t have done it without them. We were a ragtag bunch of people. We ran an impossible, improbable campaign. God was exactly with us. Otherwise, we would never have made it. And so I want to finish up by thanking you, Jesus. How sweet it is!

Jon Reisman is an associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of Maine at Machias. His views are his own. Mr. Reisman welcomes comments as letters to the editor here, or to him directly via email at [email protected].