There were signs that it wouldn’t. For one thing, Republicans did fairly well down-ballot in 2020. Democrats took the Senate by the most narrow possible margin and only barely held the House, despite expectations that they’d do better. The party’s stumbles were mostly at the presidential level, something that Trump predictably tried to spin as somehow proving that fraud had occurred (which, of course, it didn’t). Either those results was a function of new Trump voters showing up and adding their down-ticket votes to those of the Trump-skeptical wing of the GOP — or the results were a demonstration of how Trump was hampering the party by creating a focal point of Democratic anger. For Trump, eyeing 2024, it’s useful that people think the former is the case.

With Youngkin’s win on Tuesday night, though, we got strong evidence that the reality is nearer to the latter. Combined with the closer-than-expected results in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race, the two races show significant vitality for the post-Trump GOP, even in blue states. There are a lot of factors to consider, starting with the unpopularity of President Biden. Tuesday was the first test Biden faced, too, and — as was the case in both New Jersey and Virginia in 2017 — voters clearly showed up in part to express displeasure with the newly elected president. More broadly, Biden’s unpopularity crystallized at perhaps the worst possible time for his party, with enormous energy (stoked heavily by right-wing media) surging as the election neared…

In other words, the safest assumption at this point is neither that Trump’s absence hampered the GOP nor that his lackadaisical engagement boosted Youngkin. It’s that Biden may be playing a similar role for Republicans to the one that Trump did in energizing Democrats from 2017 through 2020. It’s more likely that the partisan divide Trump helped widen may, for his party, be his most useful legacy.