How the Democrats lost Virginia

I don’t want to overinterpret one race, but the fear for Democrats going forward has to be that the gains they made in suburban areas with Trump on the ballot are not sustainable without him on the ballot, and that the rural white vote will continue going the way it has been even without Trump. Do you see it this way?

I still tend to think that with elections we have thermostatic swings, and it is very hard to govern this massive, diverse country. But I think you can tell a story that Republican gains among rural whites are permanent, and that the suburbs become a swing area that swings toward them during times of Democratic governance, and if Republicans can hold on to some of their gains among African Americans and Hispanics, I think that is scary for Democrats. But, in the bigger picture, covid has not gone away as quickly as people had hoped; the economy is not rebounding as quickly as people had hoped. There is a lot going against the Democrats right now.

Why did you say it’s good for Democrats that the swing against them is pretty uniform?

It means that there are big-picture things going on that are out of their hands and that are also out of the hands of Republicans. If it’s covid, if it’s the economy, maybe those things get better in a year. Maybe I am a bit nihilistic in that I think a lot of these things really are outside the control of what happens in Washington. If we had seen a massive swing in Loudoun County, which was ground zero for the critical-race-theory issue, that would suggest the Republicans have an issue they can latch on to and use to really pound the Democrats in the midterms. But, for now, it looks like if Republicans are going to win, it will be by virtue of not being in power, rather than having some agenda the public is lining up behind.