Biden presidency threatened by Virginias political earthquake

Virginia is a place I know and love, having owned my dream house nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains during my time in Washington. It has made the long demographic journey from being a reliable red state (Republican-leaning) to blue state (Democratic-leaning) over the past generation.

While southern Virginia and the countryside remain largely untouched by time — maintaining their social and political conservatism that goes back to the founding of the country — northern Virginia has boomed, changing the overall political and social complexion of the state beyond recognition. Northern, suburban Virginia is home to the workers who populate and run the capital; people well to the left politically who believe in big government for the simple fact that they are big government. Over the past 20 years, this has led Virginia to become a reliably blue state, one that Joe Biden last year won from Donald Trump by a comfortable 10 points.

That makes this week’s shocking victory of Republican political novice Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia governor’s race all the more striking, and all the more important. Just a year on from Biden’s easy win there, Republicans have turned the tables on the Democrats — who, in Terry McAuliffe, were running a relatively popular former governor — in this now reliably blue state. All of this makes it crystal clear that the Democrats are in a world of hurt and that the Biden presidency itself is in peril.

Not only did Youngkin triumph, but he also provided Republicans with a blueprint to take on Democrats literally anywhere in the country, as he successfully won back the moderate, independent, suburban female voters who had deserted the GOP of Trump in droves. First, Youngkin embraced the toxic Trump — hugely popular in the party, even as he frightens everyone else — but not too close. While McAuliffe uttered Trump’s name like a mantra, it was not enough to stem the tide. Trumpism without Trump — a belief in local, limited government, deregulation, tax cuts, protectionism, and avoiding wars of choice — remains the future of the Republican Party.

But Youngkin had a clear message, too. First, he generally noted that the Biden presidency has failed. Biden came to office promising to be a repairer of the breach, to unite the country after the toxic, poisonous internecine hatred of the Trump years. Suffice it to say, this has not come to pass, as instead Biden has become a prisoner of the leftist, progressive wing of his party, still strident, ideological and partisan. Youngkin played on the moderates’ disappointment that Biden has not moved to unite the country.

Second, Youngkin played on Democratic weaknesses in the culture wars, particularly regarding critical race theory, the pernicious and divisive doctrine that — now that Marxism’s reliance on class analysis has been discredited with the end of the Cold War — race as a monocausal analytical explanation has taken its place. While CRT is not directly on the Virginia school curriculum below the college level, recommended teacher readings throughout Virginia’s school systems involve CRT texts. To put it mildly, this horrifies many moderate, suburban female voters, who are appalled that their kids are being taught that all white people are oppressors and all black people are victims.

Worse for McAuliffe, when egged on by his allies in the staunchly Democratic teachers’ union, he fatally said: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” The statement doomed the former governor because this is precisely what his opponents believe he thinks privately, but rarely says publicly. At the heart of the leftist Democratic Party, since the days of Woodrow Wilson, there is a very unattractive belief in technocracy; that experts rather than citizens know what is best for the country and that “expertise” trumps democratic oversight.

The simple truth is that many Virginia parents believe they cannot leave the thinking to Virginia’s teachers because the education establishment, far from being neutral, is a fully organized wing of the Democratic Party. Virginia mothers want their children taught, not indoctrinated. McAuliffe’s arrogant brush-off of parents gave Youngkin the intellectual opening that led to his victory.

Third, and in line with this anti-democratic technocratic trend, Youngkin played on the endless COVID-19 vaccine mandates that have given the government so much new and unchecked power. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s most high-profile pandemic expert, has been on every analytical side of many pandemic issues — a fact that has not done wonders for his credibility. From initially saying that COVID-19 would not pose a problem for the US to saying masks would not need to be worn and habitually changing the percentage necessary for herd immunity — stances he has all since repudiated — Youngkin again attacked Democratic credibility, merely by showing how often experts like Fauci have been wrong.

Trumpism without Trump, the triumph of parents over CRT in terms of local education, and an impatience with vaccine mandates and the heavy hand of government are the main ingredients in Youngkin’s triumph. Worse for Biden and the Democrats, the Virginia political earthquake can be replicated throughout the country. With the midterms lying just ahead in 2022, the House of Representatives looks gone for the Democrats, with even the Senate now in play. Virginia could well be the beginning of the end of the Biden presidency.

• John C. Hulsman is the president and managing partner of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, a prominent global political risk consulting firm. He is also a senior columnist for City AM, the newspaper of the City of London. He can be contacted via johnhulsman.substack.com.