They Whom the Gods Would Destroy They First Make Proud

The results in Chesterfield are also a potential harbinger of what looms beyond Virginia, in suburbs where anger toward Trump is motivating voters bent on defeating Republican candidates in next year’s midterm elections.

--Paul Schwartzman

You might want to read Schwartzman's in-depth profile of Chesterfield County -- Virginia's third most populous, consisting mainly of Richmond's southern suburbs -- and why (or how) it went Democratic on November 7th for the first time in 61 years.

Powerful energies sparked by the surprise election in 2016 of an unqualified huckster, awakening a political complacency to rise up and assert itself in 2017. There ain't no better story anywhere for what it portends for 2018.

Volunteers came out of the woodwork in Chesterfield. Collectively, they reached out either by phone or by door-knock to over 50,000 voters on behalf of Democratic candidate for governor Ralph Northam and the rest of the Democratic slate; they staffed with poll greeters all 75 polling sites in Chesterfield County, the first time in living memory that they had the volunteer workforce to pull it off.

That kind of energy, and the organization behind it, is what is prompting so many premature retirements among the Republican gospel choir.