Of course Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe played the race card. It’s what Democrats do.

Democrats have been playing racist politics since their party was formed by slave owners in the 19th century and run by segregationists in the 20th, passing the torch to supporters of the son of segregation — identity politics — in the 21st.

Now comes Virginia Democrat and gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe with a pledge to re-segregate Virginia schools by setting up a program to select teachers by race instead of merit. This in the middle of seriously vocal objections by Virginia parents to injecting the racist Critical Race Theory propaganda into their kids’ schools. Infamously, CRT instructs kids to judge their peers by race. This being a policy McAuliffe approves of, to the point he pledges that he will keep Virginia parents from interfering and stopping CRT in Virginia schools.

Now, on the heels of the McAuliffe race-card playing, the Trump-hating Lincoln Project performs a racist stunt aimed at fooling Virginia voters into believing the stunt was performed by supporters of McAuliffe’s GOP opponent Glenn Youngkin.

It is no surprise that McAuliffe would play the race card and stand up for segregation. Using racism to win elections is what Democrats do routinely, as no less than the Wall Street Journal noted in a new editorial.

But the unintentional hilarity here is the racism-reveal of the so-called Lincoln Project. Formed originally by Establishment Republican consultants opposed to Trump, they have eventually shown their true colors as left-wingers, in this case as devoted to using race in elections as the Democrats they clearly idolize.

As the WSJ noted, Lincoln Project founder Stuart Stevens has written an entire Trump and GOP-hating book ironically titled It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump. Among other things, the book’s info posted on Amazon, without a shred of irony, has Stevens writing a couple considerable lies right off the bat. The lies?

To quote directly the first would be about 1964 GOP nominee Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona and the blatantly untrue allegation of “Goldwater’s opposition to desegregation.”

Hello? It was Barry Goldwater, in 1945 and newly out of the Air Corps (as the future U.S. Air Force was then called), who organized the fledgling Arizona Air National Guard. And it was Goldwater who insisted that the new unit be integrated — accomplishing this a full two years before Democrat President Harry Truman integrated the entire U.S. military.

Further putting Stevens’ race-card playing to shame with Goldwater was the 1963 interview of Goldwater by Chuck Stone, the editor of the Afro-American, a national black weekly. Wrote Stone:

In the area of civil rights … his deep feeling about racial inequality again and again rises to the surface whenever he touches upon this critical subject.

Stone continued, writing that “one thing is certain: (black) people will have a sympathetic ear to their demands” if Goldwater became president. Years later, in the 1970s when serving as a member of the Senate’s (Sen. Frank) Church Committee investigating the improper use of the U.S. intelligence community inside the United States, it was proposed that the transcripts of the wildly improper FBI surveillance tapes of Dr. Martin Luther King’s alleged personal indiscretions be released. Goldwater biographer Lee Edwards writes that Goldwater was so angry he heatedly said he would never be a part to destroying King’s reputation and abruptly strode out of the room. His actions made such an impression on his Senate colleagues the transcripts were not published.

Goldwater, it should also be noted, was a member of the NAACP and, while heading up the family department store in Phoenix, pointedly desegregated it.

Not content to stop with lying about Goldwater on race, according to the Amazon previews Stevens does the same with Ronald Reagan. Making a racist out of the man who, as president, pushed and promoted the career of the late General Colin Powell. It was Reagan, of course, who made Powell the first black national security adviser, an appointment that led to Powell eventually becoming the first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State. Indeed, Powell would later write in his autobiography of his job in the Reagan White House that the “best part for me had been working directly with Ronald Reagan.” He added that Reagan had been a “great leader.”

As someone who served in the Reagan White House myself at the same time as Powell, I can say with certainty that General Powell was far from alone as an African-American appointee both inside the White House and in the larger Reagan administration as well. This is hardly a description of a racist president, as the Lincoln Project founder — who wasn’t there — tries to portray.

The real problem, in this instance with the Lincoln Project, is that it is a complete phony on race — as evidenced with this Virginia stunt, not to mention in other areas. It is filled with bitter, unsuccessful Establishment Republican “consultants” who began by hating Trump and now have moved on to supporting Democrats in general. (And oh yes, not to be forgotten either is that another Lincoln Project founder and Establishment GOP consultant, as reported in the New York Times, “sent overt sexual solicitations to at least 10 of the men and, in the most explicit messages, offered professional and personal assistance in exchange for sex.” But I digress.)

It’s no wonder the Lincoln Project supports Terry McAuliffe. Recall that the long, racist history of the Democratic Party includes six political platforms at the party’s beginnings that openly supported — on the record — slavery. Well, that might seem like something the party should apologize for, if not pay reparations. But as Chairman of the Democratic Party McAuliffe did absolutely nothing about this.

What’s really going on in this race for the Virginia governor’s chair is that, as expected, Terry McAuliffe is playing the race card. And with this stunt from the Lincoln Project it is abundantly clear that its bosses are only too content to join in and play it themselves.

Will this typical Democrat race-card playing have an effect in Tuesday’s election?

We will see. Hopefully it will backfire — big time.

It should.