Virginia teaches parties a lesson

The victory of Republican Glenn Youngkin in the race for the governorship of the US state of Virginia is a humiliation for Joe Biden’s bedraggled presidency. It also shows, as The Wall Street Journal noted, that “a normal human being” Republican candidate with zero name recognition can win with a good campaign while keeping away from Donald Trump as far as possible. For those reasons, the state poll will resonate well beyond next year’s mid-term elections. Both Democrats and Republicans have major lessons to learn from Mr Youngkin’s victory.

Mr Biden won against Mr Trump last year after campaigning as a political centrist who would unite the US and rescue it from the unpredictability and excesses of the Trump administration. Instead, on issues from identity politics to radical spending programs, Mr Biden has given in to the radical left. He will dig himself into an even deeper electoral hole if he continues to allow the Democrats’ progressive wing, led by house Speaker Nancy Pelosi and senator Bernie Sanders, to make all the running for the administration’s legislative program, including climate change bills. Voters are also disenchanted with Mr Biden after his administration’s calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

As Adam Creighton reports, Mr Youngkin won without abusing his opponents, and focusing on school choice and curriculum, tax, and law and order. These issues resonated with voters jaded by calls to defund the police, and by race- and sexuality-based activism. Mr Youngkin, the former chief executive of private equity giant Carlyle, studiously kept his distance from Mr Trump, despite the former president’s persistent attempts to inject himself into the campaign. Mr Youngkin’s opponent, Democratic grandee and former governor Terry McAuliffe, scion of the Clinton fundraising dynasty, persistently tried to make out Mr Youngkin was a Trump clone, referring to him as “Trumpkin”.

Mr Youngkin, wisely, refused to give in to the pressure. His strategy was to keep as far away as possible from Mr Trump’s polarising style and malign zealotry, which, polling showed, continues to alienate educated and female voters. And he did so without being disrespectful to the former president. In blazing a pathway to victory in a state Mr Biden won by 10 points in last year’s presidential election, Mr Youngkin has boosted the hopes of Republicans across the US a time when the Biden presidency is falling into ever deeper trouble.