The thermostat is a harsh mistress
By 
Yougkin has apparently won, and a lot of reporters and pundits are going to be very excited:
I don’t know what is gonna happen in VA tonight but there is a palpable excitement among certain ostensibly neutral reporters and analysts whenever some white identity politics shiny object seems to be effective politically.— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) November 2, 2021
Having said that, it’s not as if Youngkin has done anything new; indeed, “race-baiting argle-bargle with little-to-no policy content” is pretty much what Republican campaigns are now. Many of them fail, including Gillispie in 2017. It’s unfortunate, since Virginia Dems did a lot of good things with their trifecta, but being the in-party is just a huge factor that is enormously difficult to overcome:
Democrats should do good things because doing good things is good, and messaging should generally focus on popular things, and both of these things are far less important than structural factors in determining election outcomes https://t.co/fO2olmxWhd— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) November 3, 2021
The President's party lost the Virginia gubernatorial race. This has now happened 11 of the last 12 times. Clearly the result means that the political strategy you already believed in before tonight has been decisively vindicated.— David Karol (@DKarol) November 3, 2021
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