• No clearer answer to “can Dems flip and secure traditionally “red” territories?” than successfully winning statewide elections
• While not particularly progressive in a Bernie or Warren mode, Northam and Jones are mainstream Democrats who don’t actively dissassociate themselves from the national party, its coalition, or their issues, as was long typical for white southern Democrats
• The victories relied on solid black turnout in not only non-Presidential but special elections, the historic weakness of which was a major factor limiting Democrats

WEIGHING AGAINST

• These victories came from uncharacteristically high turnout in environments where each race was a sole major focus of party, niche, AND mainstream media for upwards of a month each
• The victories relied on keeping both a black base and a (female, educated, white) suburban base intact and allied. For one thing, that’s the Clinton approach that Bill sold and Hillary tried; rather than bold new path forward it’s a retreat to the last thing that worked for the Democrats
• For another, this could be understood as a mutual defense coalition where neither was particularly making affirmative demands. In the presidential election this Democratic coalition failed in the context of prominent black street action and political demands. In the Missouri gubernatorial election, this Democratic coalition failed because responses to Ferguson and Mizzou could not placate the black base without alienating the white base.
• (A real thing to look at here is the new Philly DA, an anti-incarceration type with zero establishment buy-in. Can he deliver WITHOUT seeing the type of news stories that remind suburban “collar county” types why they once looked at the city and swore never to give liberals a chance again?)
• Any moral/reputational appeal was amplified by factors particular to these specific races - in NoVa suburbs that decisively went hard for Northam, both Democrats and Republicans are part of the D.C. establishment apparatus that Trump so alienated; in Alabama Roy Moore was Roy Moore