Another Election Hot Take

The running joke about the analysis of last week’s elections is that, whatever the result, it definitely proved that the writer’s prior prescriptions for victory, whether followed or not, were definitively correct. This piece will be no different, just offered with a few more days of hindsight. The Democratic losses in Virginia are no reason to panic, just a reversion to the mean of the past forty years. Democratic erosion in the Virginia suburbs is not catastrophic and is actually more indicative of the depth of the inroads the party has made there. The real bellwether result was in New Jersey where Phil Murphy bucked nearly a half century of history. Finally, the splintering of the country continues apace, with the core of the Democratic party becoming more diverse and progressive, and Republicans abandoning policy entirely to focus on culture wars.

Since 1982, the party that controlled the White House has lost the Virginia gubernatorial election with just one exception, that being Terry McAuliffe in 2013. In that race, McAuliffe somewhat successfully branded the Republican, Ken Cuccinelli, as a conservative extremist while also considerably outspending the GOP candidate. Even so, McAuliffe just squeaked out a 2.5 point victory. McAuliffe appears to have tried to run a similar campaign against Youngkin, but his attempts to tie the moderate-sounding and looking Republican to Trump largely failed…