It’s not easy being a Democrat these days. At any moment, some action or character trait that was celebrated just a few years ago suddenly becomes verboten; or some hitherto unknown social-justice concern comes flying in from left field or outer space and lands in your lap. Such is the case with the senior Democrats in the Virginia state house, who from the governor on down have suddenly been accused of behavior that was perfectly acceptable when Al Jolson, Laurence Olivier, or Harvey Weinstein used to do it. What’s a jackass to do? The New York Times is beside itself with the intersectionality of it all:
Less than a week after Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark R. Herring said they wore blackface as young men, Mr. Fairfax on Friday faced a second assault accusation in three days. He is now under intense pressure to resign or face impeachment, transforming what had been a crisis for Virginia Democrats into a searing dilemma for the national party.
The political turmoil for Democratic leaders this weekend is unfolding at the intersection of race and gender, and risks pitting the party’s most pivotal constituencies against one another. If Democrats do not oust Mr. Fairfax, at a time when the party has taken a zero-tolerance stand on sexual misconduct in the #MeToo era, they could anger female voters.
But — and you just know there’s a but coming….
But the specter of Mr. Fairfax, 39, being pushed out while two older white men remain in office — despite blackface behavior that evoked some of the country’s most painful racist images — would deeply trouble many African-Americans. “I think the Democratic Party would lack credibility if they followed a double standard,” said Representative Karen Bass of California, who is the head of the Congressional Black Caucus. Ms. Bass said that both Mr. Northam and Mr. Fairfax should step down.
That at least would leave the Democrats with their AG, Herring, to step into Northam’s white shoes. But Herring committed the same SJW crime as Northam (who, to make things even more ludicrous, denies it), so why should Northam have to go and Herring get to stay? But if Herring goes, then the next in line for the state house is… a Republican! Oh no!
“It’s a nightmare right now,” said Representative A. Donald McEachin, a Virginia Democrat who can trace his history here back to Revolutionary War-era slaves. “We’ve worked hard on the Democratic brand for so many years,” he said, “and now we have to deal with this.”
If by the Democrat “brand” he means slavery, segregation, secularism, socialism, and sedition, well, they’re doing a helluva job.
Almost all of Virginia’s Democratic leaders and lawmakers on Friday night called on Mr. Fairfax to resign and a legislator vowed to introduce articles of impeachment if Mr. Fairfax did not quit by Monday. The state Democratic Party, after a conference call of its steering committee on Saturday morning in which there was near-unanimous support for Mr. Fairfax to resign, issued a statement saying he no longer had “their confidence or support” and should quit.
Gov. Northam also insists he will not resign. He does not face an imminent impeachment threat, and neither does Mr. Herring, the attorney general and second in line to the governor, who has been effusively apologizing for once wearing blackface. The governor, in an interview on Saturday with The Washington Post, said he intends to use the remainder of his term to pursue racial reconciliation and has been reading works like “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Alex Haley’s “Roots” to learn more about experiences of African-Americans.
Yeah, that ought to do it. Still, the whole world is watching — or at the least the Times certainly is:
Just how far Virginia Democrats go to confront these three statewide officials — who swept into office in 2017 on the first wave of backlash to President Trump’s election — will send a signal about how committed they are to taking a hard line on racial and sexual transgressions, and will echo well beyond this state’s borders.
But perhaps there’s another way to swerve past the deadly junction of race and gender and into a head-on collision with Saul Alinsky’s Rule No. 4, which famously states: “The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
Wait, wait — don’t tell me! Change the rules!
“It’s unrealistic to expect politicians to have lived perfect lives — the general public doesn’t expect that, and they are much more forgiving than the Twitter outrage mob,” said Elisabeth Smith, a Democratic strategist, singling out Mr. Herring. “If anything, we’ve learned the importance of taking a step back and taking a deep breath before demanding these guys’ heads on a plate.”
My God, these people are absolutely shameless. Then again, they are Democrats.
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