First, let me apologize for yesterday's history segment being out of sequence. My bad, I grabbed the wrong file. NOW, it's correct. (Sigh)
There are jobs in this country that tend to go unfilled. So desperate are employers to fill those roles that "They have a pulse" is the sole qualifier.
I've long since started to wonder if the Democrat Party isn't just that desperate. Every election cycle produces at least one, and usually far more candidates who make you wonder whether the opposition party secretly recruited them as a plant. With that in mind, allow me to introduce you to Shelly Headen.
She's an accountant from Oak Ridge, N.C., and the Democrat nominee challenging Republican state Rep. John Blust (R-N.C.) in Guilford County's House District 62 — one of the races Republicans are watching closely as they try to hold their majority. The official candidate list confirms Headen and Blust as the two names on the ballot.
And then came the social-media archaeology, because apparently nobody in modern politics has bothered explaining to candidates that the internet remembers everything, forever, whether you'd like it to or not.
Resurfaced posts bearing Headen's name and photo included comparisons of Donald Trump to Hitler, rhetoric flirting with political violence, and assorted other charmers. Standard Democrat talking points, in other words, just with the volume turned all the way up. But the crown jewel arrived Friday, when Breitbart reported on a Facebook post from a European vacation. PJM's Catherine Salgado reported on it here on Friday.
Headen had visited the Dachau concentration camp memorial. In the photo, she's smiling in front of the crematorium ovens. Her caption: "Visiting Dauchau [sic] Concentration Camp in Germany… This is where Trump supporters belong."
Honey, that's spelled Dachau, for starters. Second, and rather more urgently: that's the site where the Nazis imprisoned, tortured, and murdered human beings by the thousands. Headen's caption apparently proposed the same treatment for her political opponents. Was it meant as a joke? Doesn't much matter — the comment lands equally badly regardless of intent, standing in front of those ovens.
Mind you, this wasn't some isolated brain cramp floating around in the ether. According to The Assembly, Headen had also written, after Kamala Harris accepted the 2024 nomination, "I'm so excited! Ready for the MAGAs to die off!!" The Assembly further reported Headen acknowledged being "very vocal against MAGA," while insisting that she couldn't recall the specific language she'd used. Bold defense strategy. "I don't remember saying that" rarely lands well when the evidence in question is sitting online wearing your own name tag.
But wait, there's more, because there always is. Headen said she'd paid a consulting firm $30,000 to comb her own social-media history for potential landmines. Thirty thousand dollars, spent specifically to catch exactly this kind of disaster before it detonated — and the consultants somehow strolled right past their client posing gleefully in front of the ovens at Dachau. If that's what passes for due diligence, one has to wonder what actually made the cut, and shudder a little imagining how she'd handle an actual budget with real taxpayer money attached to it.
Then there's the other little problem. Headen reportedly denied ever having an X account, despite the North Carolina House Democratic Caucus itself having linked to an account bearing her name earlier this year. At that point, this stopped being "candidate says something dumb on Facebook" and graduated to a full-blown political fire drill.
Even WFDD, the NPR affiliate, picked up the story. The North Carolina House Democratic Caucus subsequently withdrew its support outright, its spokesman calling Headen's posts "unacceptable" and out of step with the party's expectations for its candidates. The Guilford County Democrat Party piled on next, yanking its financial, operational, and organizational support, and calling the comments "completely indefensible." Republican House Speaker Destin Hall summed it up about as efficiently as anyone: "absolutely disgusting."
Which raises the obvious question: exactly how badly does a Democrat candidate have to embarrass himself or herself before his or her own party would rather hand the seat to a Republican? Apparently, this badly.
But hold on. There's still more, and the "more" might be the single most extraordinary part of the whole saga: Headen's stated reason for staying in the race invokes Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., and Abraham Lincoln, all in one breath. "I've sacrificed myself just like Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross, and Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln and all the people that put themselves out there to sacrifice for our country," she said. "If a few angry moments on social media are the end, then so be it."
There are moments in politics where you genuinely can't tell whether you're watching a campaign unfold or an audition for a Monty Python sketch. Comparing a string of ill-advised social-media posts to the crucifixion, the civil rights movement, and a presidential assassination is one way to establish perspective. "Unconventional" would be the generous word for it. Longtime readers will know I don't tend to be quite so generous.
Here's the practical wrinkle that keeps this from simply fading away: Headen remains on the ballot. North Carolina law places hard deadlines on candidate withdrawal, and the State Board of Elections confirms that a nominee can't simply resign from a general-election ballot outside the statutory process once nominated. State candidate records still list Headen and Blust as the two names in District 62.
So even with the entire party apparatus backing away in horror, Headen remains the official Democrat nominee — producing the genuinely delightful spectacle of a party effectively whispering, "Please, don't vote for our own candidate," while her name sits printed right next to the party label on every ballot in the district. You couldn't invent this if you tried, and if you did, an editor would send it back for being too bizarre.
That's exactly why the Shelly Headen story earns more than a passing chuckle. Yes, she's one candidate in one North Carolina House district. But she's far from the only candidate this cycle whose baggage has become a headache for the people who nominated her.
Look at Maine, where Graham Platner's Senate campaign piled up controversy after controversy — inflammatory posts, a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, allegations over his treatment of women, and eventually a rape allegation he denied. Democratic support collapsed by degrees until Platner suspended his campaign outright.
Or look at Michigan, where Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed faces his own entirely separate pile of controversy — past statements, political associations, and his relationship with a certain controversial streaming provocateur we've already spent considerable column space on. His campaign is now under sustained Republican fire over exactly those associations.
Then there's James Talarico (D-Tex., Senate) — video resurfaced of him rejecting "tough on crime" policies in 2020, followed by more video of him thanking activists for drawing a "link between climate change and white supremacy and capitalism." Separately, a resurfaced 2022 speech showed him announcing his campaign would purchase only vegan products — instant backlash in a state that treats barbecue as a civic religion. Ted Cruz piled on directly: "This freak wants to ban BBQ." Talarico's team responded by posting a photo of him eating a turkey leg, and he later got laughs on a live podcast declaring, "I deny all accusations of veganism."
There’s Mallory McMorrow (D-Mich., Senate) — CNN unearthed decade-old deleted tweets showing views well to the left of her current moderate positioning, including complaining "I don't like you, Michigan" about the state's weather shortly after moving there from California, and declaring "cars are dead" — a genuinely rough line to have on record while courting voters in the heart of the American auto industry. Her defense: the old posts prove she's a "regular person" who wasn't carefully curating a political image years before running.
There also Will Lawrence (D-Mich., 7th District primary) — deleted 2020 tweets backing "defund the police" resurfaced, including a 2021 follow-up post reading: "Seems like cops are bad at stopping crime, hey i've got an idea, let's get rid of them and try something else." He's since tried distancing himself, insisting voters would see through what he calls "stupid political games" once they get to know him.
Add Darializa Avila Chevalier to this mess. Semafor groups her alongside Lawrence and Platner as another progressive candidate this cycle who deleted controversial posts that later resurfaced anyway.
These share a genuinely modern political problem: Candidates are carrying years of digital history into races that didn't exist when they wrote any of it. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, podcasts, Reddit, YouTube, old text messages, deleted posts, five-year-old photographs — all of it is potential ammunition, and the people running these campaigns absolutely know it.
Which makes the Headen episode particularly hard to explain away. She reportedly spent $30,000 having someone dig through her own digital past looking for precisely this kind of landmine. And the political equivalent of a corpse turned up in the closet anyway — a genuinely enormous corpse, wearing a name tag, standing in front of the ovens at Dachau, smiling for the camera. This raises two serious questions, both about how carefully and effectively she will spend tax dollars, and of course her underlying political and moral philosophies… you know, the ones she tried at great expense to hide.
Look, I'm not without fault. My admission at the top of this page proves that much at least. But how many times does this need to happen, in exactly the same direction, before we can label it a trend? And to the Democrat Party, I offer this advice: It's called "Vetting your candidates." You might wanna look into it. Particularly if you're trying to hide the truth from the voters.
Thought of the day: If you think the error in judgement is too small to matter, try sleeping with that mosquito you let in.
VIP members: You know what to do.
Take care, gang. I'll see you tomorrow.
Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
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