The Triumph of the Will
Five Things You Need to Read Today
1. The Trumpocalypse
If Republican politicians are not moved by the evidence against Donald Trump in the impeachment hearings, we might conclude that it's because they are looking at their voters back home and calculating that they are more likely to be re-elected if they stand by Trump.
There's one wrinkle in that calculation: the most recent election results in Kentucky, Mississippi, and above all in Virginia.
It's always an election year in Virginia because the Commonwealth insists on holding its state and local elections on odd-numbered years. So there were elections for the Virginia statehouse and for many local offices early this month. The result was a wipeout for Republicans.
One of the results we saw in last year's midterm congressional elections was a clear shift against the Republican Party among suburban middle-class voters. That shift seems to have continued and solidified, handing Democrats a majority in both the state senate and the House of Delegates.
It's somewhat normal for the party in power to lose seats in Congress after winning the White House. There is even precedent for a backlash against the president hurting his party in the statehouses; Democrats lost hundreds of seats across the country during the Obama years, a precedent I didn't think Republicans would be eager to follow.
But that's not all. In some areas of Virginia, the Republican Party is being dismantled down to the smallest level.
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