Democrats were handed a series of jolting shocks on Tuesday as they were clocked by Republican candidates up and down the ballots in several states, most notably in New Jersey and Virginia.

In races that featured false flag campaign stunts and accusations of racism and critical race theory indoctrination, GOP candidates took a clean sweep of the top state offices in Virginia. Republican Glen Youngkin defeated incumbent Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe, while two of his GOP colleagues won their elections for the state’s lieutenant governor and attorney general positions.

The crushing results in Virginia were just the start of a disastrous night for Democrats.

In deep-blue New Jersey, upstart Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli delivered to Governor Phil Murphy and every pollster in the state the greatest political shock of the year, with the Republican and Democrat now locked in a razor-thin battle for the executive office.

As of 3:30 AM Wednesday morning, Murphy and Ciattarelli were separated by just a few hundred votes with approximately 87% of ballots cast in the election counted, a stunning development in a race that was expected to be a shoo-in for Murphy and that was forecast to be won by the Democrat by 6-12%.

The gubernatorial race is now expected to go into a recount which will most likely spark numerous legal battles, and could ultimately take weeks, if not months, to determine a winner.

But the surprises didn’t stop there. In New Jersey’s downballot races, Republicans blasted out of the gate, and were, as of this writing, well on their way to pick up 8 Assembly seats.

Even more shocking was Republicans’ performances against deep-rooted establishment Democratic Senators Vin Gopal and Steve Sweeney – the Senate president and longest-serving legislator in the state – both of whom were trailing their Republican opponents by several hundred votes with nearly all votes counted, as of this writing.

The Sweeney race is particularly fascinating and surprising because the man beating the powerful Senate president is Edward Durr, a virtually unknown, conservative former truck driver who doesn’t even have a campaign website and spent a grand total of $153 in his run against Sweeney.

The results of Tuesday’s elections could possibly serve as a rude wakeup call for state and national Democrats, who will undoubtedly be holding emergency meetings to fix their messaging and likely crafting a new strategic way forward.

Republicans have successfully criticized and mocked the Democrats for being unable to follow through on numerous campaign promises. Democrats, the GOP has argued,, have chosen to focus on advancing controversial vaccine and mask mandates, and ideas like teaching children about critical race theory, rather than fixing what’s broken in the US, like the supply chain crisis, skyrocketing inflation, an unmitigated disaster at the US-Mexico border, and rising geopolitical tensions.

Democrats are being particularly anchored down by President Joe Biden’s sagging poll numbers, with the septugenarian president’s job performance ratings being worse at this point in his presidency than any other US leader in history, apart from former President Donald Trump.

Are Tuesday’s elections a sign of things to come in the 2022 midterms when the House and Senate will be up for grabs? Only time will tell.