I’ve lived in Virginia off and on since 2009 and have seen the state drift to leftward during that period. Like many, I assumed the state would be solid blue for a generation. But in recent years, I’ve also begun to notice that the Democrats’ increasing drive for social and cultural reform in the name of anti-racism—which includes everything from taking Robert E. Lee’s iconic house off Arlington county’s flag to eliminating the use of a test-only process for admissions to selective high schools—was nationalizing the state’s politics. Particularly in Northern Virginia, the most liberal part of the state, the difference between local and national Democrats began to evaporate. Could Virginia really sustain that kind of Democratic Party?

The answer began to reveal itself during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many Democratic-run school districts closed their doors to in-person learning, much as Democratic-aligned school districts did nationwide. (Research has shown that union density and partisanship predicted closings better than local infection rates.) These shutdowns were in some ways even more severe than what school districts were doing elsewhere in the country. In prosperous Fairfax County, kindergarteners, who face a minuscule risk from Covid-19, weren’t allowed to attend in-person learning as late as November 2020. Unsurprisingly, standardized test scores dropped across the state following the closures. Even in prosperous Northern Virginia, test scores fell by double digits.

The Democratic Party never owned up to the human catastrophe it created for Virginia’s kids. McAuliffe declined to comment on whether closing schools was a mistake. The party took for granted its electoral advantage on education. What were parents going to do—vote Republican?