Expect all hell to break loose within the Democrat party, with powerful key factions at one another's throats.  Voters in multiple states repudiated the radical wing of the Democrat party that had seized control of the party's agenda.

Republicans swept the statewide offices in Virginia, a state that had recently tantalized Democrat hopes of national dominance by swinging from red to purple to blue.  Even if Phil Murphy ends up winning the governorship of New Jersey as troves of mail-in ballots are added to the totals when counting resumes in the morning (a story replicating what happened in some swing states in 2020), the message is clear: the public does not want to enact the vision of the Squad as our new reality.

Minneapolis voters rejected replacing the city's police department with a social worker–laden Department of Public Safety by a 12-point margin.  This in a city that has twice elected radical Ilhan Omar.  Buffalo, N.Y. voters corrected their mistake in a low-turnout primary election that nominated radical socialist India Walton as the Democrat candidate for mayor and wrote in the name of incumbent Mayor Byron Brown by a large margin.  Voters do not want the radical agenda enacted.

The prospects for the Democrats' Build Back Bankrupt bill ever becoming law just became vanishingly small.  Charles C.W. Cooke asks the right questions:

Why on earth would Senators Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Maggie Hassan, and Catherine Cortez Masto continue to acquiesce with their party's extraordinarily foolish attempt to shove a set of FDR-sized spending programs through a 50-50 Senate? Such as: Why on earth would a swathe of moderate House Democrats agree to go along with it, when, by all appearances, they are already going to have their work cut out for them next year? Such as: What, exactly, does the Democratic Party think it is playing at? (snip)

As ABC reported over the weekend, Americans just aren't that into the idea of spending trillions upon trillions of dollars in order to satisfy Representative Jayapal. Overall, only 25 percent of Americans think the gargantuan packages would help them, with only 47 percent of Democrats agreeing. Asked whether the bill would help the economy, just 29 percent of independents said that it would. In a separate poll, Gallup picked up this trend, noting that, 52 to 43 percent, Americans believe that "the government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses."

The specter of a blowout Republican sweep in 2022 now haunts congressional Democrats in any constituency that is not an urban stronghold already in the hands of a progressive or radical.  If Virginia could swing more than 10 points, so could their state or congressional districts.

Look for more retirements by Democrats, increasing the odds of a Republican flipping their seats in 2022.

The teachers' unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, became an albatross around the neck of Terry McAuliffe.  His slavish embrace in the second candidate debate of their dogma that educators, not parents, should be in charge of education became the turning point of the Virginia election.  The unions' pressure to suspend in-class teaching over the pandemic turned out to be a massive blunder.  Not only did they lose the residual goodwill of many parents, who were deeply inconvenienced by needing to care for their children during school hours, but the online Zoom classes exposed parents to the poisonous racial doctrines being pushed as well as the other problems with government schools now that radicals have taken over the education establishment.

The Democrats can't afford to alienate the teachers' unions, but they now must find a way to push back on the more radical CRT demands that the leftists in charge of the unions will be loath to give up on.  The two unions provide not only massive donations (funded by members' dues) but also manpower to get out the vote.  Keeping the union leadership happy enough to push hard in what now looks like a tough election in 2022 is a real dilemma for the party's leaders.  They need to reassure voters that Critical Racism Theory will not be taught, but the unions will fight back hard at interference from their own side's politicians.  This has the potential to fracture one of the most important pillars of Democrat voter turnout.

President Biden's disastrous course of action in the first ten months of his administration also contributed to the debacle, and whatever leadership power he may have possessed (and there already was precious little) is seriously diminished.  Left-leaning Chris Wallace of Fox News, commenting on McAuliffe's defeat, called Biden "a weight tied to his ankle."  The rise in gasoline prices is clearly due to Biden's actions to cut domestic oil production, and the looming inflation, already bad but much scarier in the prospect of what lies ahead, has hurt a majority of voters in the pocketbook.  With natural gas and heating oil prices up by massive percentages, many families will shiver through the winter in order to have money left for other essential expenses, and they will blame Biden and the Democrats for their discomfort.

But there is another way in which Biden is costing the Democrats.  His double-deception in running for office has caused many voters to cast a suspicious eye on any donkey up for election.  The two deceptions of the Biden candidacy were:

1. He ran as a moderate who would bring us together, but he has governed with the politics of the radicals of the party.
2. He, the party, and their media enablers deceived voters into thinking he was up to the job, but with every week, voters are presented with more evidence that he is mentally unfit.  Falling asleep at the COP 26 conference is only the latest manifestation of his health and mental status, and there will be more such evidence in the weeks ahead.

Forcing Biden out of office, somehow, perhaps via the 25th Amendment, won't work, either, for Kamala Harris shows no sign of being able to overcome her inherent repulsiveness.  The thought of her as an incumbent president, having succeeded Biden, has to give the party leaders and officeholders down to the level of dog-catcher nightmares.  Denying her the nomination would lead to charges of racism and sexism, but running with her at the top of the ticket and cackling her way through rallies is a dream for Republicans and a nightmare for Dems.

For Republicans, there are also some lessons and some dilemmas.

Clearly, the education establishment's embrace of racialism, sowing animus among the races, creates a massive opportunity.  White female voters swung to the GOP in Virginia and New Jersey, after that demographic slice had softened for them, largely in response to the abrasive style of President Trump.  Winsome Sears, the new lieutenant governor of Virginia, the first Black to hold that office and first Black woman to win a statewide election in the Old Dominion, is a brand new star for the party, and her eloquent denunciation of Critical Racism Theory has the potential to bring more Black voters — especially Black women — to the party in 2022 and '24.  The Democrats know they cannot win national office if Blacks do not turn out heavily for them.

Glenn Youngkin kept President Trump out of the state campaigning for him, but also kept him and his dedicated voters happy with his candidacy.  We can expect 2022 Republican candidates to follow Youngkin's path, happy to receive Trump's support but anxious to keep a degree of personal distance from him.  How the 45th president will read this and react to it is a question.  He might get offended, for he is a man who takes politics very personally.  On the other hand, he is also a pragmatist, and he surely must be overjoyed at Virginia's flip back to red.  

If President Trump heads the ticket in 2024, he may drive some of these White female voters back into the Dem column.  If another Republican who promises to restore Trump's policies but who presents voters with a friendlier visage is the presidential nominee, success may be more probable.

We have an entire year ahead of us before the midterms, and three before the presidential race.  As the cliché goes, that's an eternity in politics.  But so dramatic is the voters' verdict yesterday that we can expect both parties to experience turmoil as they adapt to the reality of the earthquake whose epicenter was in Virginia yesterday.

YouTube screen grab.

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