The more pessimistic scenario for Democrats, though, is one in which most of these hopes come to pass and others, too — normalcy is restored, inflation is tamed, schools are open everywhere and masks are set aside, illegal border crossings diminish and homicide rates drop, no major foreign crises intervenes — and it doesn’t help the party or its president as much as one might expect.

I’ll call this, to be provocative, the “emerging Republican majority” scenario, in which it turns out that of the two big political migrations of the Trump era — affluent suburbanites turning more Democratic, working-class whites and then Latinos turning more Republican — the first one was temporary and provisional, and the second one permanent and accelerating.

In this possible future, it will become clear that the Glenn Youngkin result in Virginia was a bellwether — that there’s certain kind of suburban voter who will vote for a moderate-seeming Democrat over the Trumpiest Republican, but who will swing back to the G.O.P. as soon as there’s any excuse to do so. Meanwhile the characteristic Obama-Trump voter, whether in rural white America or in Latino areas of Florida or Texas, will remain so culturally alienated from contemporary progressivism that there’s no easy way for Biden or any other Democratic politician to win them back. And especially not our aging president’s two obvious heirs, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg, who built their careers in deep-blue precincts, embodying aspects of elite progressivism that have dubious national appeal.