Will Trumpism triumph in Virginia?

Open nativism and closet racism are on the ballot in Virginia. Will they prevail?

Vice President Mike Pence campaigns with Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie.
(Image credit: Sara D. Davis/Getty Images)

President Trump is a populist demagogue who won by using a noxious combination of open nativism and closet racism. But will Trumpism survive Trump and become an enduring feature of American politics? Unless Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate in Virginia's gubernatorial race is defeated decisively on Tuesday, the answer, sadly, is "yes."

What's more, this race shows that unless the right backs off, the left will retaliate with its own politics of fear — embroiling America in a downward spiral of fear-mongering.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.