Ed Gillespie’s loss in Virginia shows Trump has made Trumpism toxic - Vox

Here, then, is the story you would have read in every paper and seen on every news show if Gillespie had triumphed: Trumpism could work without Trump. Gillespie had taken Trump’s culture-war appeal, his fear of immigrants and crime and diversity and disorder, and severed it from Trump’s erratic personal behavior: there was no Access Hollywood tape, no bizarre early-morning tweetstorms, no fear that the candidate was professionally or temperamentally qualified for the job he sought. And that allowed Gillespie to do what Trump couldn’t: he had won Virginia.

Except none of that happened. Gillespie lost. He lost by more than Trump did. He lost by more than other statewide Republicans running in Virginia. Trumpism without Trump didn’t just fail to win. It collapsed.