Andrew Sullivan: Hope Arrives in Virginia

A letter to the editor in the Washington Post and Andrew Sullivan's weekly piece in New York Magazine largely sum up my feelings in the aftermath of the Democrat wave last Tuesday.  My only beef is that I believe that Sullivan vastly under estimates Ralph Northam.  Perhaps I am biased since I have known Northam since he first ran for the Virginia Senate and deem him to be the real deal and someone that can be believed in.  He not only inspires hope, but he is genuine.  We talked not only in campaign settings but in his office in Richmond as my husband cut his hair and even in the husband's salon late one evening when Ralph was having his hair cut before a campaign ad filming the next morning.   Add to this numerous social events not to mention his original announcement of his decision to run for governor two years ago at the home of friends in Norfolk. I have not felt this strongly about a politician since Obama's first run in 2008.  Hopefully over the next four years the country will get to know Ralph Northam and realize that he is the antithesis of Trump and today's toxic Republican Party.  First the letter to the editor from a man in Springfield, Virginia:

That sound that you heard Tuesday was the voice of the people of Virginia rejecting the politics of hate and division. It was a resounding slap in the face of intolerance and authoritarianism. It was the sound of people waking from a year-long nightmare and deciding that enough was enough. Man it felt good!

As for Sullivan, who I met years back at an Equality Virginia Commonwealth Dinner in Richmond, he, like so many of us, has been suffering from a near depression with Der Trumpenführer and his gang of thugs in office.  In the wake of the Virginia election results, I have had friends and family from around the country send thank yous to Virginia for giving them a ray of hope. Here are excerpts from Sullivan's piece:

I was wrong! Thank God Almighty, I was wrong!

You probably felt the same thing I did last Tuesday night: a euphoric whiplash as deepening dread turned suddenly into a wave of intense relief in the off-year results from Virginia. I’m still riding it. I hope you are too. Almost every surprise since last November has been a soul-crushing one. I feared yet another one. But Tuesday night’s string of decisive victories by Democrats dispelled the gloom and was the first time since Trump’s election that hope appeared a little more realistic than despair. So let’s take a moment to soak it in.

But I do owe you an account of why and how I misjudged this one, and failed to see the glimmer of dawn on the horizon. I didn’t predict anything. But I feared Northam might fall short — and what that would portend. I’ll stick by much of my analysis. I don’t think anyone suddenly believes that Ralph Northam, now governor-elect of Virginia, ran a great campaign. He didn’t. Nor is anyone reevaluating him as a charismatic, inspirational figure. He is who he is — a regular, normal candidate, with a mushy message. The good news is that he won convincingly anyway.

I was right but also wrong. The exit polls do indeed show an even deeper tribalism than 2016. Rural Republican districts became more solidly Republican, and Democratic urban and suburban districts more reliably Democratic. The margins of victory increased in both Republican and Democratic regions. The cultural issues absolutely had an impact — by polarizing the state still further. Where I was wrong was on turnout. The extraordinary Republican vote in rural areas in 2016 just couldn’t replicate itself a year later, while the Democratic base was on fire. Trump woke up the GOP base in 2016; but he has roused the Democratic base just as powerfully in 2017. [A] big part was turnout. There was a huge Democratic surge, particularly in North Virginia, where the voter margins for the Democrats soared over 2013.

Another huge factor: a big jump in the youth vote. The under-30s turnout in the Virginia governor’s race in 2009 was 17 percent; in 2013, it was 24 percent; this week it was 34 percent. And as young turnout surged, it became progressively more Democratic. In 2013, the under-30s split 45–40 percent for the Democrats; in 2016, in the presidential race, it was 54–36; last week it was 69–30. The third-party vote among the young also collapsed: from 15 percent in 2013 to one percent last Tuesday. I draw a couple of inferences from this: Trump’s extraordinary success among older voters in 2016 has produced a backlash among younger voters in 2017, who are far less complacent than they were last year and ever-more repulsed by Trump’s racist reactionism. And the younger generation has learned one thing from 2016: Voting for your ideal candidate is less important than voting for the candidate that can effectively halt the advance of the far right. Better late than never, I suppose — and Charlottesville may have helped concentrate their minds.

I lost sight of something pretty basic and unique to the U.S. Trump and the GOP are now deeply identified with throwing millions of people off health insurance; this issue was the main one in the Congress this past year; and this direct threat to the welfare of millions was easily the most important issue in the eyes of Virginia voters. Obamacare, in other words, is now a real asset for the Dems, and an anchor sinking the GOP. The record surge in new enrollments and the vote for Medicaid expansion in Maine confirm the popularity of the law and its central place in voters’ minds.

More to the point, if the Democrats focus on health care next year, and make it the center of their campaign, they can appeal to both moderates and lefties at once, without opening up Democratic divides on race, gender, and culture more generally. If the GOP passes a massive and deeply unpopular tax cut for the super-rich, this advantage will intensify.

Just one big caveat: We still have an emergency in the White House. We have a deranged president, with no understanding of the Constitution, prepared to do anything to save himself. The more he feels cornered, the more intense will be his venting and acting out. He’s currently fomenting a new war in the Middle East, at the behest of the Israelis and the Saudis. He can play the race card ever more dangerously every day. He can still provoke a constitutional crisis — and almost certainly will, when Mueller finally reports. The danger at the top remains, in other words, and may even get worse.

The power of the red minority does not look as if it’s waning; it’s just being more successfully countered. It’s still dangerous and potent, just currently on its heels.

In other words, relief is fully justified. Complacency isn’t.

Here in Virginia, I doubt that those who oppose the Trump/GOP nightmare.  Indeed, we are already focusing on voting Republican members of Congress out of office to continue the offensive to take back Virginia.  Virginia was a leader in the founding of this nation.  Now, some talk of it leading a new revolution to take back the soul of America.  Hopefully, others in states across America will be equally motivated.