“This is 2009 all over again,” said former Rep. Steve Israel, the New York Democrat who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee right after the disastrous 2010 election, when Democrats lost more than 60 House seats. “The only benefit they have now over 2009 is knowing just how bad it can get.”

Democrats’ House majority — and their path to the White House in 2020 — was built in large part on suburban, college-educated voters who spurned former President Donald Trump. But Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin’s inroads with them — carving deep into the northern Virginia counties where Democratic dominance in the last governor’s race foretold the 2018 “blue wave” — proves Democrats’ support in those suburbs is soft. That’s especially true as Biden and congressional Democrats struggle to clinch a deal on their social spending packages and Republicans double down on culture war campaigns.

“If Democrats can’t reclaim those suburban voters, I don’t see a path to keeping the majority, plain and simple,” Israel said, “and you reclaim them by talking about those issues that those voters are discussing at their kitchen table.”