No matter whether Terry McAuliffe wins or loses this week, the party in power has a problem.
© Provided by Slate U.S. President Joe Biden campaigns with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe in Arlington, Virginia. Uh oh. Win McNamee/Getty Images Political pundits have drafted their narrative options for late Tuesday night. All that’s needed is an election result to determine which one to run with. In one scenario, Virginia elects Democrat Terry McAuliffe to his second, non-consecutive term as governor, defying a late charge from his well-financed opponent, Republican Glenn Youngkin. In this case, McAuliffe’s strategy of yoking Youngkin to Donald Trump will be remembered as a stroke of genius. The midterms will be fine for Democrats. In the other, Glenn Youngkin rides his late surge across the finish line and bests McAuliffe. McAuliffe goes down as a stupid idiot for focusing so much on has-been Donald Trump. The midterms will be a disaster. The outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial election is of the utmost importance—for residents of Virginia, and what direction they want to take their state. For the much broader universe of those looking to Virginia for answers to second-order questions, though, those answers are already out there: Democrats have a problem. If the polling is anywhere close to accurate, no one is going to win the race running away. Either Youngkin or McAuliffe could win by a couple of points. And that’s why, regardless of which side the coin flip lands on, Democrats already have enough information to know they’re in a difficult position heading into midterm season. President Biden won Virginia by 10 percentage points in 2020. If Youngkin wins by two points, Democrats would be 12 points off their 2020 pace. If McAuliffe wins by two, Democrats would be eight points off. And while that two-point McAuliffe victory would be useful in the short-term for national Democrats—it would stave off that second, extremely annoying, hair-on-fire narrative from overtaking the news as they’re trying to wrap up their legislative agenda—it would hardly show that the American people are more in love with the Democratic Party than ever. Democrats would be well behind their 2020 pace, one that netted them a majority of only a few seats in the House of Representatives.
