Northam Switches Parties, Becomes GOP Governor of Virginia
It isn’t a headline I expect to see, but it is the best outcome. Republicans don’t give a shit about blackface, and Democrats can keep their resentments simmering.
Either that or just fucking gut it out. Hold a conference in Richmond about how terrible back-face is and what the Democratic process should be when some shit from 1980 is dug up by hyper-partisan Republicans.
He’s talking about switching to independent.
As I noted this morning (in the Yes, Virginia thread), Justin Fairfax, the guy being championed by Democrats as the prize for sacking Northam, has been implicated in an actual crime, and not as a student.
Someday Democrats may even realize that of all the reasons Brett Kavanaugh doesn’t belong in a courtroom (except perhaps as a defendant), his brutish upbringing was the least of them. (Funny how the organization that formed his young mind, the criminal conspiracy known as the Catholic Church, got off scot-free in all the opprobrium).
We engage in these morality plays because Republicans refuse to listen to reason-based arguments — for example, that Kavanaugh repeatedly lied in his testimony, which should be an automatic disqualifier. But Republicans — having pretended that morality was important when they were using it to impeach Bill Clinton — don’t give a flying fuck about morality, or theirs wouldn’t be such a shit-covered mass of contradictions.
Democrats, though, have internalized the Republicans’ long-since-abandoned moral standards, so 20 years after correctly pointing out that who gave Clinton blow jobs just didn’t matter, Democrats have now internalized this nonsense standard. And, to compound the moral rot, we apply these standards at random — Northam must go, Fairfax deserves careful study.
There are no perfect candidates, because there are no perfect people. But there are plenty of Democrats ready to weaponize morality because they have nothing else to offer.
Here’s Michael Moore’s take. He blames centrism:
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/54843-in-virginia-centrism-gave-us-a-hood-and-some-shoe-polish
I like Michael Moore, but he’s falling into the same stupidity trap. There’s no guarantee at all that progressive politics make someone impervious to having fucked up at some point in their past.
Ask Justin Fairfax.
Thanks for the link. Being a progressive isn’t a guarantee that you will not offend other Democrats. We are easily offended. But a progressive candidate could make the discovery that the candidate in question’s nickname in college was “coon-man” LESS LIKELY. As in poker, you make the play with the highest percentage chance of winning.
Moore rightly points out that the VA Dems have a fucked up notion of what the higher percentage play was/is. Moderates always lose one way or another. That’s why I agree with all of this:
“In Virginia’s 2017 Democratic primary for Governor, Democratic voters were convinced to vote for the “moderate” Democrat, Ralph Northam — because, as a “moderate,” he could “pick up Republican votes.” Democratic voters were told to reject the progressive candidate, Tom Perriello, a fearless Dem congressman backed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Now Virginia Democrats have learned what centrism and moderation got them. A hood & some shoe polish.
Progressives win. Women win. Moderates lose (or, are simply losers). Believing you need an older, middle-of-the-road white guy to win elections is what you think if you are a Republican — or are stuck in the 20th century.
Democrats in Virginia brought this on themselves. The only sane one in the room at that bizarro press conference yesterday was the woman standing beside Northam at the podium — his wife. When he admitted to doing just “a little” blackface at a Michael Jackson dance contest which he won AFTER he graduated medical school at the age of 26, a reporter in the room asked him if he could still “moondance.” He paused for a moment with a look on his face that signaled he was considering the request to bust a move for those gathered — only to have his wife gently grab his arm and tell him that would be “inappropriate.”
The only move Northam can make now to save his career is to switch parties. Declare himself a Virginian Republican — the party that would not pass the bill recognizing the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday unless the weekend also officially honored Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Which it now does. Each year in Virginia the King weekend in January begins on Friday with a day off (and with ceremonies that Gov. Northam attended 2 weeks ago) praising Lee, the Confederacy and the genocidal General Stonewall Jackson. That in the Age of Trump Ralph Northam believes he can get away with blatantly telling everyone, “That’s not ME in the picture! On MY yearbook page! With MY quote underneath the photo! And I have no idea why MY nickname in school was ‘Coon-Man’! And you should not mix up this photo of ‘someone’ in blackface with ME in blackface a few months later at a dance contest — which MY new black friend Seth now tells me is racist and I’m sorry…” — Northam’s belief that the Big Lie can work for him because it works for Trump is further proof that Democrats who try to be Republican-lite will always fail miserably. To be Trump, to get away with it, you have to lie 30 times a day. a nonstop barrage of falsehoods that spray the electorate with so many rounds of bullshit that the lesser-formed brains just give in and buy the whole package.
What I see is a bunch of people trying to use this to bolster their pre-existing beliefs, myself included. In other words, normal human behavior.
Expecting superhuman behavior is the source of the problem. Northam didn’t have that picture in his yearbook because he’s a centrist. It was there because he was brought up in a racist stronghold of a racist society.
Just as Justin Fairfax’s politics had nothing to with him allegedly forcing that woman to give him a blow job.
^ Truth
Can’r someone just make the F-ing trains run on time?
I’m gonna accept whatever the people of Virginia decide and vote for Kerri Evelyn Harris in 2020.
Whether she runs for anything or not.
Think positive. Cuz if she doesn’t run, we’re all f*d.
Uh…I’m pretty sure we’re all fucked whether or not she runs.