Democrats in Virginia have set a new standard: There is a tacit statute of limitations that applies for youthful and even young adult stupidity.
If Democrats ever again try to use school yearbooks and similar ephemera to attack a conservative candidate or nominee, may every one of the accusers spend double time in painful purgatory. Here on earth, meanwhile, may they and not the accused be shunned from decent society.
These thoughts spring from the continuation in office of Virginia’s top three state elected officials. The acceptance of this status quo by the current and former chairmen of the Democratic National Committee puts a national party seal on the state party’s disgrace.
It was less than three weeks ago that Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam first offered a defense of post-birth infanticide (for which alone he should have resigned) and then was shown to have appeared either in blackface or a KKK robe while in medical school 35 years ago. Two allegations soon surfaced that Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax had committed sexual assault in the past 20 years, and then Attorney General Mark Herring admitted to wearing blackface while dressed as singer Michael Jackson in 1980.
Northam, Fairfax, and Herring are Democrats. All three remain in office. And, already, as reported by the liberal Atlantic, “The Furor in Virginia Has Quieted.” In a story bearing that headline, writer Andrew Kragie noted that Terry McAuliffe, who served as both governor of Virginia and chairman of the DNC, appearing Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” “said not a word about resignations, seeming to accept Northam’s plan to redeem his governorship with a ‘focus on race and equity.’”
Likewise, current DNC Chairman Tom Perez ignored host Chuck Todd’s mention of the Virginia scandals on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” instead offering an anodyne assertion that when Democrats err, other Democrats “are not reluctant to call them out.”
More: “Perez’s and McAuliffe’s remarks … suggest that Democratic leaders are coming around to accepting the status quo in Richmond. It leaves the party in a position to still claim the moral high ground on issues of race and gender, having denounced Northam, Fairfax, and Herring, without handing the governorship to the Republican speaker of the state House, who would be next in line if the three top Democrats all resigned. Conservatives question whether the Democrats actually possess the high ground, asking what, aside from party affiliation, distinguishes Fairfax’s situation from that of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.”
Ah, yes, Kavanaugh. Accused with no evidence, presumed guilty of attempted rape by much of the media, then presumed guilty again because of what turned out to be entirely spurious assumptions about the meaning of obscure high-school (not medical or law school) yearbook references, Kavanaugh was given no benefit of doubt. This, despite an entire adult career of distinguished public service and aggressive promotion of female empowerment.
Kavanaugh received no pass. But now, after some initial tut-tutting, leading Democrats are letting their own party members’ bygones be bygones.
Not everyone is willing to move on. On Monday, numerous protesters appeared outside Northam’s office, demanding that he resign.
One can identify with the protesters’ anger. But for what appear to be the wrong reasons, McAuliffe, Perez and other Democrats may be partially right to move on from the blackface controversies (but by no means from the assault investigation into Fairfax). At some point, a dumb statement or symbolic act of idiocy at age 25 or younger should not override the record of three subsequent decades. At some point, yearbook hijinks should become nearly irrelevant.
Still, if they are irrelevant for Democrats, they should be irrelevant for Republicans, too. Somehow, though, one doubts the disgusting double-standard will disappear.
