Blue Virginia / Red Virginia. Depends on what you're looking at
The Jesus/Money coalition continues to do a fine job of controlling the USA from the bottom up, even as it fails repeatedly from the top down.
It used to be the other way around. Back in the 1980s when it was thought that no Democrat would ever be president again it was also thought that the House of Representatives would be heavily Democratic forever.
Today we do better in national and statewide races (neither of which is subject to gerrymandering) but the House is a difficult target.
The composition of th House of Representatives is heavily skewed by the composition (and ruthlessness and corruption) of state legislatures, who have the task of drawing the congressional districts.
And those state legislatures are themselves based on districts and have a long history of representing acreage over persons.
Over-representation of rural interests locally begets over-representation state, begets over-representation national. Very bottom-up.
(And republicans even do fairly well in suburban state-legislature districts because property taxes are local/state and even a lot of liberals who own homes worry about property taxes.)
So in Virginia last night we had a Democrat elected governor, a Democrat elected Lieutenant Governor and a flat tie in the Attorney General race while the 100 person state House of Delegates went Republican 67-33.
The key to a Democratic future, medium/long term, is control of state legislatures in 2022. (After the 2020 census.)
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