No matter whether Terry McAuliffe wins or loses this week, the party in power has a problem.<\/b>
\n\u00a9 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2014for 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\u2019s why, regardless of which side the coin flip lands on, Democrats already have enough information to know they\u2019re 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\u2014it would stave off that second, extremely annoying, hair-on-fire narrative from overtaking the news as they\u2019re trying to wrap up their legislative agenda\u2014it 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. The national Democratic party, in damage-control mode, may try to write off the result\u2014speaking anonymously, of course\u2014as an issue of McAuliffe just being a bad apple. And sure, the longtime party operative, insider, and fundraiser organizer is not exactly the heir to Barack Obama. He committed a gaffe in one debate that the Youngkin campaign has successfully hung its hat on for the final month of the campaign. But while McAuliffe\u2019s approval has been in decline for weeks, it\u2019s still better than Joe Biden\u2019s. In a recent Roanoke poll of the Virginia race that showed McAuliffe leading by 1 point, McAuliffe was +1 in net favorability, while Biden\u2019s net approval rating was -6. A Washington Post poll that similarly showed McAuliffe leading by 1 point pinned Biden\u2019s net approval at -7. If Biden\u2019s unpopularity is dragging McAuliffe down in a favorable, Democratic-leaning state like Virginia, consider what it would do to Democrats nationally. The FiveThirtyEight average shows Biden\u2019s approval underwater by 8 percentage points, about as bad as it\u2019s ever been. An NBC News poll this weekend, that showed Biden at 42 percent approval to 54 percent disapproval, showed a particularly grim state of affairs under the hood. Despite a waning Delta variant wave and growing economy, a paltry 22 percent of voters said things in the nation were heading in the right direction, compared to 71 percent who said they were on the wrong track. \u201cThe promise of the Biden presidency\u2014knowledge, competence and stability in tough times\u2014have all been called into question,\u201d Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, which co-conducted the survey, told NBC News. So, we don\u2019t need a Virginia gubernatorial result to tell us about the political environment. The data about the political environment already tells us about the political environment! And in this one, Democrats would be fortunate to win any competitive race, including Virginia\u2019s gubernatorial one. But since people will always look for ways to blame the candidate for specific strategic faults, rather than simply acknowledging [gestures broadly] all this, McAuliffe will be hammered for focusing so much on Trump in the event of a loss. It will be the hot question of the week, from one Sunday show to the next: McAuliffe focused on Trump and lost. Shouldn\u2019t Democrats move on? The answer, George Stephanopoulos, is: No. First, consider the question of whether McAuliffe focused too much on Trump. Those who say it was the brunt, if not the entirety, of his offensive against the Republican opposition are not exaggerating. But what else was he supposed to run on? The popularity of Joe Biden? The lightning-fast rate of legislative accomplishment in Congress? And while Biden is an anchor on McAuliffe right now\u2014and the more pertinent one, given that he\u2019s presently in charge\u2014it\u2019s not like Trump has suddenly become popular in Virginia, either. The Roanoke poll had Trump\u2019s favorability in the state at 37 percent, compared to 54 percent unfavorable; the Washington Post poll found that Trump\u2019s (repeated) endorsement of Youngkin made 9 percent of voters more likely to support Youngkin, compared to 37 percent who would be less likely. Not a bad, dominant figure in our societal landscape to tie your opponent to. Dislike of Trump is also one of the few, in-your-face items that has near-unanimous support among Virginia Democrats, who otherwise may not all be on the same policy page. Virginia Democrats \u201cdisapprove of Trump at 90 percent,\u201d one Democratic adviser working on the race told me. \u201cThe data tells us that we can\u2019t overdo it, at all.\u201d Trump is still the most potent weapon Democrats have. He just may not be potent enough to surmount everything else. Rather than soothe themselves that everything is fine if McAuliffe pulls off a narrow escape Tuesday, or run around like panicking maniacs if a Republican wins the governor\u2019s seat for the first time since 2009, Democrats in Washington should focus on addressing the same problem they had two months ago or one month ago, and will still have Wednesday: They\u2019re not liked. The Congress they control should pass laws with stuff that people like. Ensure the Delta variant is the last major coronavirus wave. Fix supply chains. Make stuff less expensive. Somebody should do something about all of the problems, and it should be them. Otherwise, no matter what happens in Virginia this week, Democrats aren\u2019t going to have a very good 2022.<\/p>\n