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      Election Day Silver Linings!

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      Walking to the polls on Election Day, I suddenly had a vision of all my neighbors trying to break out of the doldrums by voting for Curtis Sliwa for mayor.Sliwa was the nominee of the desperate, massively outnumbered New York City Republican Party, and while he has plenty of conservative positions on issues like mandatory vaccinations (no), he is better known as an animal lover who has 17 cats in a studio apartment he shares with his wife.On Tuesday, Sliwa’s big moment involved an attempt to bring a kitty into the polling site. It was one of several dust-ups between the candidate and the election workers that ended with his ballot jamming the scanning machine.At about that point I suddenly wondered: What if this guy wins? It was not an outcome most people had ever considered, for obvious reasons. But gee, the country was in such a foul mood, the status of the Biden administration so subterranean. The image of Congress wasn’t really much better than that apartment full of cats. What if, just to show their profound irritation, the voters went Sliwa?Didn’t happen. The winner, Eric Adams, a Democrat, is a former police officer who ran a smooth campaign about his plans for reforming crime-fighting in New York. Early results suggest Sliwa will be very, very lucky to get a third of the vote. I am sharing this because I know a lot of you need some happy political news to tell friends over the weekend.Some Possible Post-Election Conversational Strategies for Liberal Democrats:— Find a few next-generation stars to burble over, even if they just got elected to your town’s zoning board of appeals.— Funny stories about other cats.— Ranting about Joe Manchin.Perhaps you noticed that, just before Election Day, Senator Manchin called a press conference to announce that he wasn’t sure he could support Joe Biden’s social services program because of his concern about the “impact it’ll have on our national debt.”Given Manchin’s super-status as a Democratic swing vote, we certainly have to pay attention to his fiscal conservatism and obsession with the national debt. After we stop to muse — just for a minute — that his state, West Virginia, gets about $2.15 in federal aid for every dollar its residents send to Washington.But back to the positive side of the elections — or at least the less-depressing-than-originally-perceived side. That big governor’s race in Virginia, won by the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, was maybe the worst blow of the evening for Democrats. But when you’re having those dinner table conversations — or, hey, drinking heavily at a bar — be sure to point out that the loser, Terry McAuliffe, is a former Virginia governor. His state seems to have a real problem with chief executives who hang around, and there’s a law that makes it impossible for a sitting governor to run for re-election. McAuliffe was trying for a comeback after his enforced retirement — a feat that’s been achieved only once since the Civil War.Didn’t work. Will you be surprised to hear that Donald Trump is taking credit?The other governor’s race, in New Jersey, was way more dramatic than expected, with incumbent Philip Murphy fighting off a surprisingly strong challenge from Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman. Very possible this one could still be in recount purgatory during the holidays.I really hope Murphy, a rather fearless leader in the war against Covid, is not being punished for vaccine mandates and mandatory school masking, which Ciattarelli complained about endlessly. Or that the irritable voters wanted to get back at their governor for remarking, a few years ago, that if you’re a person whose only concern is tax rates, New Jersey is “probably not your state.”Ciattarelli reportedly spent about $736,000 running that quote in a 10-day broadside of ads. But I’ll bet most New Jersey voters accept the governor’s view, however grudgingly. Almost all of them must have some state concerns besides taxes — schools? Street lighting? The end of black bear hunting?Fortunately, you won’t be expected to argue that Tuesday was one of the great days in the history of American democracy. Otherwise, some detail-oriented colleague might mention that a House district near Columbus was won by the chairman of the Ohio Coal Association.Yeah, and Minneapolis failed to pass its public safety program. It seems that Seattle will end up with a new law-and-order mayor rather than criminal justice reform.On the other hand, there were loads of stories to remind you how our country, for all its multitudinous failures to live up to the American dream, still also manages to come through. A lot. Boston elected its first woman and first person of color as mayor. Pittsburgh and Kansas City, Kan., each elected its first Black mayor. Cincinnati chose an Asian American mayor, and Dearborn, Mich.’s next mayor is going to be an Arab American Muslim.Cheer up, people. We made it through another election. Take the holidays off from politics if you want. Just ignore the new flood of emails asking you to donate to some worthy candidate’s quest for a House seat in 2022. What’s the rush? You’ll hear from them again next week. And the week after that. …The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Republicans Pounce on Schools as a Wedge Issue to Unite the Party

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      Rallying around what it calls “parental rights,” the party is pushing to build on its victories this week by stoking white resentment and tapping into broader anger at the education system.After an unexpectedly strong showing on Tuesday night, Republicans are heading into the 2022 midterm elections with what they believe will be a highly effective political strategy capitalizing on the frustrations of suburban parents still reeling from the devastating fallout of pandemic-era schooling.Seizing on education as a newly potent wedge issue, Republicans have moved to galvanize crucial groups of voters around what the party calls “parental rights” issues in public schools, a hodgepodge of conservative causes ranging from eradicating mask mandates to demanding changes to the way children are taught about racism.Yet it is the free-floating sense of rage from parents, many of whom felt abandoned by the government during the worst months of the pandemic, that arose from the off-year elections as one of the most powerful drivers for Republican candidates.Across the country, Democrats lost significant ground in crucial suburban and exurban areas — the kinds of communities that are sought out for their well-funded public schools — that helped give the party control of Congress and the White House. In Virginia, where Republicans made schools central to their pitch, education rocketed to the top of voter concerns in the final weeks of the race, narrowly edging out the economy.The message worked on two frequencies. Pushing a mantra of greater parental control, Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, stoked the resentment and fear of some white voters, who were alarmed by efforts to teach a more critical history of racism in America. He attacked critical race theory, a graduate school framework that has become a loose shorthand for a contentious debate on how to address race. And he released an ad that was a throwback to the days of banning books, highlighting objections by a white mother and her high-school-age son to “Beloved,” the canonical novel about slavery by the Black Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.But at the same time, Mr. Youngkin and other Republicans tapped into broader dissatisfaction among moderate voters about teachers’ unions, unresponsive school boards, quarantine policies and the instruction parents saw firsthand during months of remote learning. In his stump speeches, Mr. Youngkin promised to never again close Virginia schools.While Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee, and his party allies eagerly condemned the ugliest attacks by their opponents, they seemed unprepared to counter the wider outpouring of anger over schools.Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s governor-elect, pushed a message on education that stoked the resentment of white voters while speaking to broader frustrations with schools.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesFor weeks before the Virginia election, Republicans pointed to the school strategy as a possible template for the entire party. Mr. Youngkin’s narrow but decisive victory on Tuesday confirmed for Republicans that they had an issue capable of uniting diverse groups of voters. The trend was most evident in Mr. Youngkin’s improvement over former President Donald J. Trump’s performance in the Washington suburbs, which include a mix of communities with large Asian, Hispanic and Black populations.Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, listed education as a main plank of his party’s plan to reclaim power, with promises to introduce a “Parents’ Bill of Rights.”“If the Virginia results showed us anything, it is that parents are demanding more control and accountability in the classroom,” he wrote in an election-night letter to his caucus.Steven Law, the president of American Crossroads, one of the most active outside groups working to elect Republicans to the House and Senate, said the strategy was ripe for replicating in races across the country.“It’s always possible to overdo something,” he added, cautioning that Republicans would be unwise to pursue attacks that appear hostile to teachers themselves. “But very clearly there’s a high level of concern among parents over political and social experimentation in schools that transcends ideology.”While the conservative news media and Republican candidates stirred the stew of anxieties and racial resentments that animate the party’s base — thundering about equity initiatives, books with sexual content and transgender students on sports teams — they largely avoided offering specific plans to tackle thornier issues like budget cuts and deepening educational inequalities.But the election results suggested that Republicans had spoken about education in ways that resonated with a broader cross-section of voters.In Virginia, the Youngkin campaign appealed to Asian parents worried about progressive efforts to make admissions processes in gifted programs less restrictive; Black parents upset over the opposition of teachers’ unions to charter schools; and suburban mothers of all races who were generally on edge about having to juggle so much at home over the last year and a half.“This isn’t partisan,” said Jeff Roe, the Youngkin campaign’s chief strategist. “It’s everyone.”Democrats largely declined to engage deeply with such charged concerns, instead focusing on plans to pump billions into education funding, expand pre-K programs and raise teacher pay.In Virginia and New Jersey, the Democratic candidates for governor adopted the approach of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who faced a recall challenge that exploited similar lines of attack but beat it back by leaning into vaccination and mask mandates in schools. Ahead of the midterms, many of the educational issues are sure to linger.Already, the effects of remote learning on parents have been severe: School closures drove millions of parents out of the work force, led to an increase in mental health problems among children and worsened existing educational inequalities. Many of those effects were borne most heavily by key parts of the Democratic base, including women and Black and Latino families.Strategists, activists and officials urged Democrats to prepare for the Republican attacks to be echoed by G.O.P. candidates up and down the ticket.Virginia was among the East Coast states that were slowest to reopen their schools. Some parents supported the cautious approach, but others became angry.Kenny Holston/Getty ImagesGeoff Garin, a top Democratic pollster, said the party’s candidates needed to expand their message beyond their long-running policy goals like reducing class sizes and expanding pre-K education.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

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      Youngkin’s Dance With Trump Was Pivotal. But Is It Repeatable?

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      Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia may inspire Republican imitators vying to win over Trump supporters without embracing the former president outright.Since he burst onto the national political scene in 2015, Donald J. Trump has strong-armed one Republican after another into submission. But in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin did something new: He managed to keep the former president at a politically safe remove without alienating him or his allies.Mr. Youngkin’s success in the Virginia governor’s race speaks not only to his own deft handling of his party’s volatile and unpredictable standard-bearer but also to Mr. Trump’s apparent willingness to place himself on the sidelines during a campaign that received wall-to-wall coverage on cable news.What is not known is whether Mr. Youngkin’s formula is repeatable elsewhere, particularly in the 2022 midterm elections. Mr. Trump has little track record of ceding the spotlight or allowing other Republicans to take credit for any political success, and there is little reason to expect that to change.Early on in his own campaign, Mr. Youngkin, a former private equity executive, recognized Mr. Trump’s usefulness to his political prospects. In the spring, during the Republican nominating contest in Virginia, Mr. Youngkin echoed Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud. After winning the G.O.P. nomination at a party convention in May, Mr. Trump endorsed him and Mr. Youngkin told a conservative radio host that he was honored.“President Trump represents so much of why I’m running,” Mr. Youngkin said at the time.But thereafter, Mr. Youngkin mainly kept quiet about the former president. Mr. Trump, in turn, made no public demands of fealty and encouraged his Virginia supporters to flood the polls, something he refused to do ahead of the January special elections in Georgia that gave Democrats control of the Senate.Mr. Youngkin focused his campaign on education policy, eliminating taxes on groceries and gasoline, and other local issues that were hardly Trump priorities. He insisted that he planned to run his own race, staying away from two rallies that Mr. Trump called into. And he rarely spoke about the issues that used to motivate the Republican base, such as gun rights or opposing abortion.But embedded in his education policy was a pitch to the same white grievance politics that fueled Mr. Trump’s campaign — an attack on critical race theory, a graduate-level academic framework that has become a stand-in for a debate over what to teach about race and racism in American schools. In Virginia, it served as a catchall rallying cry akin to the states’ rights battles of generations past.And the Democrats seemed to help Mr. Youngkin more than Mr. Trump did.Mr. Youngkin did not need to remind Mr. Trump’s supporters that the former president had backed him. His Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, turned much of his campaign, and his closing argument above all, into a message tethering Mr. Trump and Mr. Youngkin together, a gambit designed to energize the Democratic base — which it did in Northern Virginia.Even President Biden joined in the Trump-bashing, speaking far more about his predecessor than his own agenda during a rally for Mr. McAuliffe last week in Arlington.“The reason I mentioned Trump,” the president told reporters on Wednesday, was because issues that Mr. Trump supports, even while out of office, were “affecting their lives every day and they’re having a negative impact on their lives.”Mr. Youngkin successfully fused the Republican Party’s past and present, building a coalition of Trump partisans and moderates who disengaged with the G.O.P. during the former president’s White House tenure.The Republican turnout on Tuesday — aided by an expansion of the mail-in and early-voting laws denounced by Mr. Trump — swamped what otherwise would have been a respectable showing by Mr. McAuliffe, whose total, while still being counted, showed he won at least 500,000 more votes than he received during his winning 2013 campaign.But Mr. Youngkin did a notch better, with his pro-Trump and anti-Trump coalition, a theme he hewed to during his victory remarks.“Together, together, together, together, we can build a new day,” he said.Mr. Youngkin’s triumph may inspire copycat Republicans eager to win the allegiance of Mr. Trump’s supporters without a sustained public embrace of the former president. The tricky part will be doing so without alienating elements of the party critical to winning in competitive contests.As results poured in showing Mr. Youngkin ahead on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump issued three separate self-congratulatory statements. Then on Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump told John Fredericks, a conservative radio host and the chairman of his 2016 and 2020 campaigns in Virginia, that Mr. Youngkin would have been crushed without his support.“Without MAGA, he would have lost by 15 points or more,” Mr. Trump said.Former President Donald J. Trump said Mr. Youngkin would not have won the election in Virginia without the support of his MAGA supporters.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Youngkin spent $20 million of his own money to subsidize television ads portraying him as a from-the-bootstraps business success, clad in a campaign-logo fleece vest that cemented his image as a suburban dad. Weeks later, Mr. McAuliffe began airing his own ads attacking Mr. Youngkin as a Trump acolyte.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

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      McAuliffe Showed How You Lose Gracefully in Virginia

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      Glenn Youngkin’s victory over Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor’s race surprised many people in a state that has been trending blue for years. Republican candidates also won the other top races in the state, for lieutenant governor and attorney general.All three races were high-profile, closely fought affairs. Yet there were no claims of fraud by the losers, no conspiracy theories about Venezuelan despots rigging voting machines, no spurious lawsuits demanding recounts. As of Wednesday afternoon, at least, the State Capitol in Richmond stands untouched.How refreshing to see adults accepting defeat with grace.And the stakes were plenty high. Democrats across the country had grown increasingly anxious over the polls coming out of Virginia, and for good reason. It’s considered a bellwether for the midterm elections, and Tuesday’s vote served as the first major referendum on the Biden era.The McAuliffe campaign’s reaction to his crushing loss? Gird yourselves. “Congratulations to Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin on his victory,” Mr. McAuliffe said in a statement Wednesday morning. “I hope Virginians will join me in wishing the best to him and his family.”Come again? Republican turnout was way up in key precincts; surely Mr. McAuliffe was teeing up to make some wild accusation about partisan operatives stuffing ballot boxes. “While last night we came up short, I am proud that we spent this campaign fighting for the values we so deeply believe in,” the statement said.It’s almost like listening to a foreign language, isn’t it? Over the past year, Americans have been subjected to an endless temper tantrum by one of the country’s two major political parties — a party now led by people who have apparently lost the capacity to admit defeat. One year to the day since the polls closed in 2020, Donald Trump still hasn’t formally conceded that election. He couldn’t even muster the dignity and decorum to hand over the presidency to Joe Biden in person, skipping town on Inauguration Day like a crook on the lam.This can’t-accept-defeat mentality began in earnest before the 2016 election, which Mr. Trump said was rigged even after he won, and it has set the tone for all that has come since. It emboldened the absurd and dangerous campaign of lies about election fraud in 2020, which notably focused on the big cities where larger numbers of Black voters live. It led directly to the deadly Jan. 6 riot that Mr. Trump incited at the U.S. Capitol. And it continues to infect the party 10 months later, as top Republicans still refuse to acknowledge Mr. Biden as the legitimately elected president and Republican-led states pass laws to make it easier for their legislatures to overturn the will of the voters if they don’t like the result.Speaking of election fraud, Republicans have been strangely quiet on the topic this time around. Interesting how that works: When a Democrat wins, it’s ipso facto proof of fraud. When a Republican wins — presto! — the election is on the level. This is how so many top Republicans managed to keep a straight face in 2020 as they argued that votes for Mr. Biden were fraudulent even while votes for winning Republican candidates farther down the same ballot were magically untainted.Hey, Republicans! This does not have to be so hard. All you have to do is value American democracy more than you value your own party’s hold on power. I guarantee that Democrats want to win just as badly as you do, and yet they take their lumps like grown-ups.Here are some examples to learn from: In 2016, Hillary Clinton conceded less than a day after polls closed, even though she was running neck and neck with Mr. Trump in key swing states and was sitting on a popular-vote lead that would eventually swell to nearly three million votes. President Obama called Mr. Trump in the middle of the night to congratulate him; this is the most basic stuff of peaceful democratic transitions, and yet Mr. Trump could never bring himself to do it.Or recall what Vice President Al Gore did on Dec. 13, 2000, conceding one of the closest elections in more than a century after the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 to stop the vote counting in Florida. “I accept the finality of this outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession,” Mr. Gore said in a nationally televised address that should stand as one of the most important moments in American history.Alas, Republicans these days seem more intent on deflecting criticism than on hearing it. Cue the references to Stacey Abrams, who refused to concede the 2018 Georgia governor’s race after losing to her Republican opponent, Brian Kemp. Agreed, that wasn’t good. It also wasn’t good that Mr. Kemp, as the secretary of state at the time, was in charge of running the election in which he was a candidate. After her defeat, she and others accused him of suppressing turnout by purging Georgia’s rolls of more than 1.4 million inactive voters. It’s worth noting that Ms. Abrams was not the incumbent and that no major Democratic figures publicly supported her refusal to concede.Losing is hard. It happens to everybody. But a concession is not just a symbolic gesture. It is the sine qua non of representative democracy — a literal enactment of the loser’s acceptance of the legitimacy of his or her opponent. When a single candidate refuses to concede, it’s corrosive. When a sitting president and much of his party refuse to, it can turn deadly, as the world saw on Jan. 6.I’m no fan of Mr. Youngkin, but he won fair and square, just as Mr. Biden did a year ago. Maybe Mr. Youngkin’s victory will remind his party that it can still prevail in closely fought elections and accept the ones they lose. Meanwhile, Republicans should read Mr. McAuliffe’s statement and remember why it’s so important to lose gracefully.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Youngkin’s Victory in Virginia's Election Is a Warning for Democrats

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      In the first statewide elections since Donald Trump’s defeat, Republicans appear to have won the governor’s race in Virginia, as well as coming closer than expected in New Jersey. While this is surprising — Republicans had not won a statewide race in Virginia in 12 years — Virginia voters have swung against whichever party holds the White House in 10 of the last 11 gubernatorial races. Perhaps reinforcing this penchant for split governance, Democrats appear to have held the historic gains they made four years ago in the House of Delegates, despite running within district lines heavily gerrymandered toward Republican advantage.The clearest message for Democrats nationally is that the fear of Trump 2.0 is not enough to win elections. Congressional Democrats, especially those in tough races, should be sprinting to immediately pass the boldest possible version of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. Democrats need to look like the party that knows how to govern and produces results that benefit Americans of every race and region.I learned this lesson as part of the congressional class that lost the 2010 midterms. While some suggest my vote for the Affordable Care Act cost me my seat, I was sure that the real political cost was incurred by watering down the original proposal and taking far too long to pass it. Right now, the fight is not just immediately to pass Build Back Better but whether new benefits like child-care subsidies for the working and middle class kick in next year or down the road. Prescription drug reform should be strong enough that voters can see cheaper prices by next year’s election. Democrats need to run on results that families have felt.Democratic delegates ran ahead of the statewide ticket, protecting most of the gains made four years ago. As State Senator Jennifer McClellan noted: “Since taking the majority in 2019, Virginia Democrats have made generational progress on a wide range of issues voters care about. We’ve raised the minimum wage, expanded paid sick leave, passed a 100 percent clean energy law, expanded voting, civil, worker and reproductive rights, implemented criminal justice reform and taken major actions on gun safety and community college affordability.” Democratic incumbents running as “reformers with results” may be a winning formula. Voters are angry, exhausted after nearly two years of lockdowns, economic insecurity, and general disruptions of normal life. They are eager to blame whoever is in charge, which Republicans translated into enormous gains in the suburbs and sweeping wins in rural areas. Glenn Youngkin, like Mr. Trump in 2016, ran as an outsider ready to shake up the status quo. Historically, Democrats tend to win with younger “change” candidates, like John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. While Mr. Biden was seen as a break from that trend, he may have represented “change” in the immediate contrast to Trump in ways that have been harder to maintain as president.Anachronistic efforts to blame the left have fallen flat, given that neither Terry McAuliffe, Philip Murphy or Mr. Biden represent the most progressive wing of the party. The old center-left divide obscures new divides. The fault lines of American politics today are partisan, but the ideologies on either side are surprisingly fluid, as Mr. Trump proved. For the past two weeks, the Youngkin campaign flooded my digital feed with ads attacking Mr. McAuliffe for his corporate PAC donations from Dominion Energy. Banning corporate contributions was a major part of the reform platform that propelled Democratic delegates to office in 2017. This issue has grass-roots energy across the aisle. Anti-corruption advocates, namely Clean Virginia, have built broad political support while sometimes butting heads with leaders of both parties. This is a trend traditional pundits seem to miss — that winning issues are emerging less from the old bipartisan consensus than anti-establishment comparisons. This is true about antitrust enforcement and accountability for Big Tech, limiting presidential war powers, and eliminating dark money and corporate power in politics. Any course correction should focus on steering Democrats to prioritize benefits popular with moderates, like paid family leave and strong prescription drug reform, ahead of protecting corporate lobbyists.The issues gaining bipartisan support today are rarely emerge from established institutions. Republicans can win by running up numbers in vast expanses of low-population rural areas, and Democrats ignore those areas at their peril. The two groups in Virginia most likely to benefit from debt-free community college, for instance, are white rural families and recent immigrants or their children. We will not rebuild a common American dream when the establishment cares more about the price of the bill than the price Americans are paying to have a future. We do not need to win back all the old Johnny Cash Democrats, but authentic reformers with roots in these communities can level the score.The culture wars clearly profit Republicans at the polls and Facebook’s bottom line. By leaning into red-hot school board fights, Youngkin became the first major Republican candidate in years to rally the MAGA base while keeping Donald Trump out of state. The Democratic Party does not support defunding the police or teaching critical race theory in public schools, so it is not surprising they are losing a battle they have no desire to wage. They lack the ability to declare a unilateral détente in the culture wars, and fear of Trump’s shadow failed to scare suburban voters with the same intensity as the images Republicans conjured of public schools running out of control.Finally, Republicans can win fair elections. Their win in Virginia came despite Democrats passing the kind of voting rights reforms that have been stymied at the federal level. When Republicans focus more on winning over voters than making it harder to vote, they can win in areas thought to be blue. Voting reform was and should be a bipartisan issue. Early and easier voting helps historically marginalized communities. While this has been and remains primarily African-American voters, it also applies to rural voters working a double shift, younger families that may be moving frequently to find work, and seniors still navigating health threats. Let’s put the lies about rigged elections to rest, and see whose agenda most voters endorse. That may not bridge our partisan divides, but could get us back to agreeing on the right rules of the game in our shared democracy.Tom Perriello represented the Fifth Congressional District of Virginia in the House from 2009 to 2011, and ran for the Democratic nomination in the 2017 race for governor.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      What Youngkin's Win in the Virginia Governor Race Means for Democrats

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      Less than a year after taking power in Washington, the party faces a grim immediate future, struggling to energize voters without a presidential foil and losing messaging wars to Republicans.The menacing thunder couldn’t get much louder for Democrats.Few in the party had high hopes that their era of rule in Washington would last beyond the midterm elections next year. But the Republican resurgence on Tuesday in Virginia — a state that President Biden won by 10 percentage points last year — and surprising strength in solidly blue New Jersey offer a vivid warning of the storm clouds gathering as Democrats look warily to the horizon.For five years, the party rode record-breaking turnouts to victory, fueled by voters with a passion for ousting a president they viewed as incompetent, divisive or worse. Tuesday’s results showed the limitations of such resistance politics when the object of resistance is out of power, the failure of Democrats to fulfill many of their biggest campaign promises, and the still-simmering rage over a pandemic that transformed schools into some of the country’s most divisive political battlegrounds.The Republican Glenn Youngkin, a former private-equity executive, defeated the Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the race for Virginia’s governor.Melissa Lyttle for The New York TimesIn Virginia, the Democratic nominee for governor, Terry McAuliffe, was beaten with relative ease by Glenn Youngkin, a Republican private equity executive and political newcomer.In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, faced a stunningly close race after being expected to coast to victory. In Minneapolis, voters rejected a ballot measure pushed by progressives that would have replaced the Police Department with a public safety department.Perhaps most strikingly, the crushing setbacks for Democrats in heavily suburban Virginia and New Jersey hinted at a conservative-stoked backlash to the changing mores around race and identity championed by the party, as Republicans relentlessly sought to turn schools into the next front in the country’s culture wars.For Democrats, the results on the nation’s single biggest day of voting until the midterms next year raised alarms that the wave of anti-Trump energy that carried them into power has curdled into apathy in a base that is tired of protesting and is largely back at brunch. Or, in what would be even more politically perilous, that the party’s motivation has been replaced by a sense of dissatisfaction with the state of a country that has, despite all of Mr. Biden’s campaign promises, not yet returned to a pre-Covid sense of normalcy.Virginia Shifts Right in Race for GovernorThe Republican candidate for governor, Glenn Youngkin, received much stronger support in every corner of the state than President Trump did in 2020. Mr. Youngkin defeated former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat, according to The Associated Press. More

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      Terry McAuliffe Concedes in Virginia Governor's Race

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      Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia, conceded on Wednesday morning to his Republican opponent, the businessman Glenn Youngkin, as the Republican Party claimed the state’s governorship for the first time in more than a decade.“While last night we came up short, I am proud that we spent this campaign fighting for the values we so deeply believe in,” Mr. McAuliffe said in a statement.He added, “While there will be setbacks along the way, I am confident that the long-term path of Virginia is toward inclusion, openness and tolerance for all.”With his victory, Mr. Youngkin, 54, presented his party with a formula for how to exploit President Biden’s vulnerabilities and evade the shadow of Donald J. Trump in Democratic-leaning states. A wealthy former private equity executive making his first run for office, he elevated education and taxes while projecting a suburban-dad demeanor to demonstrate he was different from Mr. Trump without saying so outright.With Mr. Trump out of office, Mr. McAuliffe struggled to generate enthusiasm among liberals at a moment when conservatives are energized in opposition to Mr. Biden.The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Youngkin shortly after 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, hours after the polls closed on Tuesday night.Mr. Youngkin’s surprise victory in Virginia represents the starkest warning yet that Democrats are in danger. It was likely to prompt additional congressional retirements, intensify the intraparty tug of war over Mr. Biden’s agenda and fuel fears that a midterm electoral wave and Mr. Trump’s return as a candidate are all but inevitable.“The MAGA movement is bigger and stronger than ever before,” Mr. Trump said in a statement Tuesday night. More