I think last night was more then just NJ and Va. though, even in Va., nobody expected the Dems to come close to taking the state assembly, and pending outcomes in the real close contests, they might.
The Democrats won from coast to coast, and races large and small. The governor's race was expected to be close in Virginia. Gillespie was clobbered instead. Gillespie used every trick in Trump's bag, and he got clobbered. In other words, Trumpism without Trump just did not work well at all.
Most important, perhaps, is that equality and inclusion won, the Trump politics of division was walloped. Just look at all these firsts from coast to coast by Democratic candidates. Last night, anyway, the Republicans clearly lost the culture wars. Equality in race and inclusiveness in life style won big:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...rsts-election-day_us_5a026c51e4b092053058cf38
Just a hard lesson for Republicans last night:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...cover_there_is_no_trumpism_without_trump.html
"There are lessons here, for all sides. With this potent anti-Trump energy, Democrats have even more reason to step up recruitment and find candidates for every race. For the first time in years, Democrats contested local races across the country, and it paid tangible dividends. Republicans, in turn, have a couple of test cases for "Trumpism without Trump," of what happens when a traditional Republican candidate runs a Trump-like campaign, without embracing the president himself.
The limits of that strategy will be the enduring effect of the race in Virginia, regardless of which party ends up capturing the House of Delegates. "Trumpism without Trump" is just a euphemism for the politics of white identity—for campaigns tuned to white racism and designed to stoke white racial resentment. This politics consumed the last weeks and months of the Virginia election, and its decisive defeat is one of the most important outcomes of Tuesday's voting".