The suburban Virginia block that explains how Democrats might be about to blow it

If McAuliffe, a former governor who wants his old job back, loses in this state that President Biden won by 10 points a year ago — and that’s looking like a distinct possibility — the collective shoulder shrug of Crestwood Drive will be one clue about what happened. The story of an increasingly large and diverse state can be understood in part by the story of one small suburban block.

That’s because this stretch of Crestwood Drive is not just any block. One of the houses is owned by former Trump administration acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf. A year ago, his disapproving neighbors set the street ablaze in a gaudily colorful display of progressive activism. Many houses were festooned with multiple large signs — for Joe Biden, for Black Lives Matter, and for a host of liberal causes.

There was a community parade and rally outside Wolf’s house, to protest Trump and the Homeland Security’s efforts to suppress civil unrest in Portland, Ore. Political street theater in a neighborhood normally more concerned with elementary school theater was novel enough to prompt a story in the Washington Post (no easy feat given the Post’s depleted and generally inattentive Metro coverage).

Twelve months later, there is scant evidence that McAuliffe’s attempt to revive the agitated emotions of 2020 and to cast Youngkin as a Donald Trump proxy is working. What seems evident is that many residents are feeling drained and ready to return to a time when politics wasn’t all-consuming.

“Everyone exhausted themselves with the presidential election. And I think there was such a sense of fear that Trump would be reelected, that when thank God he wasn’t, you know, people tend to [say] ‘That crisis has been averted. I can go back to other priorities in my life,’” said Tony Sanchez, a 57-year-old Democrat who works for a defense contractor.