Youngkin’s victory in Virginia is not just a setback for the Democrats

Glenn Youngkin is the very happy new governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. He’s a Republican, in a state where the Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, was expected to win. In party terms it’s plainly good news for the Republicans and bad news for the Democrats. In terms of presidential political terms, though, there’s a case for saying that Mr Youngkin’s victory represents something of a setback for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Arguably it may be part of a trend in coming months that makes it somewhat less likely that these senior gentlemen will be running again in 2024. It also means that next year’s mid-term elections and control of Congress may be up for grabs again.

Of the two, it is Biden who is probably the bigger loser. Virginia is a state he carried last November, and one he might have expected to hold this early in his administration. On his way to the Cop26 summit on climate change – not a cause universally acclaimed in the United States – President Biden declared “We’re going to win.” He could hardly say anything else, but he probably meant it.

Biden boasts comparatively poor poll ratings in this, his honeymoon period – some of the lowest in recent times, in fact, though funnily enough not as weak as those of President Trump at the equivalent point in his presidency.

Fairly or not, Biden has had to face the consequences of America’s hurried retreat from Afghanistan, which looked and felt very much like a military defeat. With only the weakest of holds on Congress, his legislative programme has stalled. Important bills and initiatives on protecting voting rights and on police accountability have faltered. The Youngkin result will give congressional Republicans further incentive to stymie the president’s plans.

The economic recovery, as elsewhere, has been held up by global supply-chain problems, and inflation and fuel costs are up. These are the kinds of things that have traditionally blighted presidencies, to the point of extinction. The Virginia result hints at a similar fate for Biden. More to the point, it means that he will face more losses in the Senate and the house, leaving him with even less traction for his reforms. He seems to have become a lame duck almost before he has begun. Whether he, Kamala Harris or some other figure runs in 2024, they’ll have a meagre record from which to launch a campaign.

As for Trump, obviously any setback for Sleepy Joe is to be relished, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that a vote for Youngkin was a vote for Trump. Obviously, the former president wasn’t on the ballot paper this time. Put simply, then, the Virginia vote proves that the Republicans can win without Trump. Or at least arguably. Youngkin exploited Trumpesque themes about race and schooling in his campaign, and has paid lip service to the usual claims about voter fraud in November 2020. On the other hand, Trump, the de facto leader of the Republicans, wasn’t much mentioned in Youngkin’s speeches – and tellingly, the former president didn’t organise one of his trademark mass rallies (possibly because he calculated that Youngkin would lose).

One shouldn’t put too much faith in any single result, and local factors were also at work in Virginia’s unusual electoral cycle, but there may just be emerging the outlines of a post-Biden, post-Trump, and more normalised pattern of politics in the 2020s than seemed possible even a few years ago. That might be the good news.