Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is riding high. He will start 2020 with a Democratic legislature for the first time in two decades. A parade of horribles is about to descend upon the Old Dominion. And yet, if Northam were a Republican, he would've been out long ago. A few months ago, this whole administration was the brunt of jokes. It was an embarrassing event; it still is. Northam had a rather interesting photo in his medical school yearbook, showing a man in blackface while another was in full-blown Ku Klux Klan regalia. He admitted to it. He apologized for the photo, then backtracked and said that wasn’t him BUT there was another time that he engaged in blackface for a dance competition in Texas in the 1980s. Attorney General Mark Herring also admitted to darkening his face in college. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax was slapped with two allegations of rape.
Now, no one could resign. It would be the GOP would takeover. This was about power. It also showed how liberals’ moral superiority complex blew up in their faces. If these people were truly principled, Northam would’ve resigned, as would Herring and Fairfax. It’s the Left’s toxic cocktail: racism and Me Too. The only problem is that its perpetrators, sorry, alleged perpetrators—Fairfax has not been convicted—are Democrats.
The Left knew the Republicans could take over. With razor-thin majorities in both chambers of the legislature, Democrats knew they had a good shot at retaking Richmond. So, the progressive groups who would have unleashed on Northam for his antics decided to shut their mouths—and he survived (via NYT):
Nine months ago, Democrats at every stratum in Virginia called on Gov. Ralph Northam to resign over a racist photograph on his medical school yearbook page.
Mr. Northam bumbled his response, admitting he was in the picture before saying he was not, then seemed like he might demonstrate Michael Jackson’s moonwalk at a news conference where he acknowledged blackening his face for a dance contest.
[…]
The scandalous events of February that drew intense media attention played no apparent role in dampening enthusiasm for Democratic candidates on Election Day, as the party once feared.
“I kind of forgot about the blackface until you brought it up just now,” Tanisha Kelly, an adviser at a group home in the Richmond suburbs, said last week after voting for Democratic state lawmakers. She said the governor had seemed invisible during the campaign, making little impression on her.
[…]
“What brought people to the polls on Tuesday, it was to vote for Governor Northam’s agenda,” said Jennifer Carroll Foy, a member of the House of Delegates. “I believe that no one wants to get in the way of what he can do here in Virginia.’’
In the end, money was no problem: It rained down on Democrats from national anti-gun and abortion rights groups, and from individual donors in the state and around the country. All were driven to flip the General Assembly, where Republicans’ narrow majorities were the last barrier to unified Democratic control of state government for the first time in 26 years.
[…]
“The liberal groups that should have continued to put pressure on Governor Northam for this scandal made the political calculation that it was better for their self-interest to shut up about it,” said Will Ritter, a Republican strategist in the state.
Whatever doubts that lingered with Democratic voters about state leadership were largely banished in the summer, when the governor called the Legislature back to Richmond to pass gun restrictions after a mass shooting in Virginia Beach on May 31.
[…]
Defying calls to resign by the Democratic caucuses in the House of Delegates and State Senate in February, the governor vowed to dedicate the rest of his term to fighting racial inequity. His effort won support from black lawmakers.
It’s absurd, but that’s the Democrats. They’re whores for power. This is politics. They’re all rotten, but the Left is especially so. Then again, this is also that fault of the Virginia Republican Party. For nearly a decade, they’ve been a disaster at candidate recruitment. Almost a quarter of the state senate races had no GOP opponent. The last time they won a statewide race was in 2009. You have to do better than that. As for the Left, well, you may have won in Virginia this month, but I don’t ever want to hear about diversity, inclusion, or any race lectures ever again. You decided to reward a doofus because his blackface-wearing antics were revealed at a bad time. Shut up about race and your care about so-called marginalized people. You just wanted to win an election. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. As I said, this is politics. We’re all slutting it up for power at some level. Just be honest about it that’s all.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member