If McAuliffe’s challenge is to defy the President’s plummeting ratings and gin up the Democratic coalition with it-could-happen-here alarmism about the consequences of a GOP win, Youngkin’s task is equally tricky: he must somehow keep happy diehard Trumpists and win over enough moderate suburbanites turned off by the party’s rightwards turn but still concerned by the Democrats’ increasingly assertive progressivism.

That may sound impossible, but several developments have suddenly made it seem feasible. The most important is the growing disenchantment towards Biden felt by many Democrats and independents. No wonder McAuliffe has publicly despaired at the possibility that his party might fail to pass their infrastructure package or their Build Back Better legislation before election day on November 2.

Education has also loomed large in the race, offering Youngkin a policy area where rural conservatives and moderates in the suburbs might be able to find common cause. Thanks in part to over-mighty teaching unions, Northern Virginia’s schools were slow to reopen during the pandemic, with some only recently returning to full-time in-person instruction. Virginia has also been a flashpoint for the fight over how history and racism are taught in America’s classrooms, with bitter fights at school board meetings in Loudoun County making national headlines. Youngkin has promised to ban critical race theory in classrooms if he is elected. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach,” said McAuliffe in a disastrously blunt moment recently. Needless to say, it has featured heavily in Youngkin television ads ever since.