Dem coalition fractures

As we headed into the Virginia gubernatorial contest, a looming question for our politics was whether the shift of Democrats to suburban voters alienated by Donald Trump would hold. The answer to that question, at least in the short term in Virginia, is no.

Which gives rise to a another question: Why did the Democratic coalition that came together in the Trump era fracture so quickly?

Republican Glenn Youngkin won by 50% to 48% by shifting voters in a red direction everywhere. He ran up even greater margins over Democrat Terry McAuliffe in some deep-red and rural counties than Trump did in 2020.

But Youngkin also made gains in the suburbs. He improved over Trump by eight points in Loudoun County, the site of battles over education and race, by six points in Fairfax County, and by five points in Prince William County. He made similar gains in the Richmond area.

That means the coalitions that won the House in 2018 and the White House in 2020 may have frayed pretty badly. Why?

The most obvious explanation, offered by Jonathan Bernstein, is that Democrats control Washington and President Joe Biden’s approval rating is in the dumps. When the bumpy recovery and recent pandemic wave brought Biden down, the loss became structurally more likely, just as both parties have lost such contests during previous periods of White House control.

Other explanations are everywhere. Democrats have thus far failed to deliver on Biden’s agenda, raising doubts about the ability of Democratic governance to deliver. The centrists who have stymied progress have helped create scenes of chaotic infighting in Washington removed from voter concerns.

Or maybe education and the critical race theory (CRT) debate did alienate a lot of suburbanites. If so, it’s both true that anti-CRT demagoguery of the rankest kind was employed to juice up the GOP base and that softer versions of the issue did motivate some swing voters.

If that’s right, this is something Democrats must address on both fronts. That would entail both fighting back with more visceral appeals that spotlight the role of Republican lies in fomenting social chaos and conflict, and more frontally addressing parental concerns about curricula.

Jared Leopold, a Democratic strategist in Virginia, notes that Youngkin’s success will shape the GOP playbook in the 2022 midterms.

“We’re going to see an army of mini-Youngkins in 2022 running the parental control playbook in attempt to tap into anxiety over local schools,” Leopold told me. “Voters are anxious, including over schools — and every Democratic candidate needs a plan to address that.”

In truth, all these factors probably played some role. But I confess to being taken by surprise at how quickly the Democratic coalition frayed, only one year after coming together against Trump.

All of which suggests two very unsettling conclusions.

The first is that Republicans appear to be reaping the positive consequences of the deep polarization along educational lines unleashed by Trump while evading the negative ones.

Trump drove up the GOP’s share of the blue-collar and non-metropolitan white vote, while driving suburban and educated whites into the Democratic coalition. Youngkin actually built on the former, driving up the GOP vote share in red areas even higher through CRT and “election integrity” appeals.

Yet he did this while simultaneously keeping Trump at arm’s length, and offering a cheerful center-right vision, in a way that reversed the losses among suburban and educated whites.

Which leads to another point. If this result does signal a Democratic loss of the House and possibly the Senate in 2022 — and GOP strength in the New Jersey gubernatorial race also underscores this — we may be staring at the third time a Democratic president had a window of only two years to clean up a major mess left behind by Republicans.