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Hey, good morning, playbookers and Rugu Minovalin.

It's Wednesday.

We'll get through everything you need to know about last night's elections.

This is your Politico Playbook Daily briefing.

Before President Joe Biden left for Europe six days ago, he told House Democrats, quote,

I don't think it's hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities in my presidency

will be determined by what happens in the next week.

With an action on infrastructure, heading to COP 26 with no congressional backing for his climate proposals,

and potential defeats in one or more crucial elections on Tuesday,

that would make everything worse, Biden may have been more prescient than we thought. Here's the thing.

Biden may have mattered more than Trump and Glenn Yonkin's triumph over Terry McAuliffe in Virginia.

According to exit polls, Biden was about as unpopular as Trump in Virginia, but Biden embraced

the race as a referendum on his presidency,

and campaigned in the state, while Trump, to his great annoyance, was persuaded to stay away.

There's an incentive by the progressive left and the Trumpist right to exaggerate the importance of Trumpism to Yonkin's win.

The left would like to think that Fox News inflamed culture were issues like critical race theory

were a silver bullet. Trump would like us to believe that he is somehow responsible for shifting

the state from a 10-point loss last year to a two-point win Tuesday night. But Yonkin had to

overcome Trumpism, more than he had to rely on it. He ran a campaign that was a throwback to pre-Trump

republicanism, coded racial appeals to

working class white voters, combined with technocratic conservatism, focused on education, low taxes,

...