It probably wasn’t Bill Nye’s political punditry that attracted thirteen hundred people to Charlottesville’s hundred-and-thirteen-year-old, flag-and-bunting-clad Jefferson Theatre on the Tuesday evening two weeks before Election Day. The crowd inside had been lined up for hours to hear from Abigail Spanberger, the former congresswoman running for governor, and Pete Buttigieg, her star surrogate for the night. But the Science Guy, who’d got to know Spanberger through discussions on space policy, had the stage first. “I first heard about Abigail Spanberger after she famously explained to some Democratic Party operatives that they have to stop saying odd, strange, weird things,” he...