But the former President divides as much today, in exile, as he did when he was in the White House. For all Trump’s continued claim on the G.O.P. imagination, there were plenty of Republicans who took the opposite lesson—which is that Republicans like Youngkin ran far better than Trump did, even in Trump-friendly districts. “Trumpism without Trump,” as the Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien put it, in Bloomberg, appears to be more popular than Trumpism with Trump. So perhaps Tuesday was a wake-up call not just for Biden.

For Democrats, the Trump question is one of tactics: How much to talk, or not talk, about the ex-President? Until now, Biden and his White House have largely taken the Voldemort approach, practically refusing to utter Trump’s name, although they are well aware that the existential threat of a Trump return to power remains perhaps the single most galvanizing issue that one could throw at Democratic voters. But, on the campaign trail, McAuliffe was all about Trump, Trump, Trump—Youngkin, he said at one point, was “Trump in khakis”—and it did not prove to be a magic incantation. So does that mean it’s a mistake to campaign against Trump, or simply that Democrats have to offer more than that when the former guy is not on the ballot himself?