Until recently, Virginia seemed to be emerging from some of the darker shadows of its history. The state is becoming more ethnically diverse, more culturally open; it is, you might say, becoming more like America. For the “real America” is more than small towns and rural areas; it’s a place of vast variety, unified — or so we like to think — by a shared commitment to universal values of democracy and human rights.
Not accidentally, Virginia has also become politically more like America, at least in national elections: Like the electorate as a whole, it supported the Democratic presidential candidate in the last three elections.
But is Virginia’s apparent moral progress an illusion? And if it is, what does that say about America as a whole?
Virginia was, of course, the site of the infamous Charlottesville march by torch-carrying white supremacists — “very fine people,” according to Donald Trump — that ended with the death of a counterprotester. More important, perhaps, is the fact that despite its growing political moderation and its Democratic governor, Virginia is among the states still refusing to expand Medicaid, even though that refusal means gratuitous financial hardship for many and a significant number of people dying from lack of medical care.
How is this possible? Democratic-leaning voters are much less likely than Republican-leaning voters to cast ballots in state and local elections; as a result, a politically moderate state has a hard-right legislature. And there’s a real possibility that it may soon have a Republican governor, too.
