Suppose the Republicans Win in Virginia
I am writing this about three hours before the polls close. It seems pretty clear that the Republican candidate will either lose by a small margin or win, in either case signalling a sharp decline in the strength of the Democrats, at least in that state. One interesting question is what the consequences will be.
The most obvious answer is that if the Democrats are at serious risk of losing the House and Senate because they have pushed too hard in a progressive direction, which is what the news stories on the election seem to imply, they should and will moderate their positions, both nationally and on the state level.
I can see two arguments in the other direction. One is that if they only have a year left, they need to spend that year getting as much of what they want through Congress. The obvious problem is that they need fifty votes plus the VP and don't have them in their own party for anything very far in the direction the progressives want, as has been repeatedly demonstrated in recent weeks. That makes me wonder if there is any way they could pry loose two or three Republican senators, perhaps ones that do not plan to run for reelection. I don't know enough to guess how likely that is, or if there is some other way of doing it.
The other argument, which is likely to convince progressives and could even be true, is that the problem is not being too progressive but not progressive enough, that moderating their position will lose them more votes on the left, with disappointed progressives staying home, than it will get them in the center.
I don't know enough about the politics, especially within the Democratic party, to offer more than speculation.
One related point occurs to me. The infrastructure bill — the one that is actually about infrastructure — is routinely described as a bipartisan bill, but I don't think that can be true. It has been stalled in the House because a handful of progressive Democrats won't vote for it until they are guaranteed getting their bill passed as well. That is only a problem if the Republicans are almost unanimously against it, in which case it isn't bipartisan.
At least not in the House.