The fact that Northam, a Democrat, has not yet resigned is a lesson learned from Trump: If you don’t resign and stare down the public outrage, chances are the news cycle will move on and you just might survive.
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) February 6, 2019
If you want to be extremely cold about it, the choice for Democrats is: Handing over power to Republicans, in a redistricting cycle, because of scandals dating from 1984, 2004, and 1980.
They'll eat a few more bad news cycles before they do that. https://t.co/7ALzZ7nBcU
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 6, 2019
Among the things I remember least fondly about working on a Michigan state college campus in the early 1980s was the ongoing brushfire of “ironic” racist cosplay by milkfed frat bros and frat-wannabes newly empowered under President Reagan’s “states rights” backlash. It was the dawning of the “If hip-hop artists can use the n-word on the radio”… victimization-claiming, when every heir to a suburban car dealership or autoworker’s son fearful he wasn’t going to step into the kind of guaranteed-for-life sinecure as his old man gleefully translated Ronnie’s “Morning in America” campaign the same way they’d applaud Trump’s “MAGA” warcry a generation later. Yeah, the fact that a lot of college men in Virginia during the same period didn’t see anything wrong with blackface surprises me… well, as much as it would surprise me to discover that some of those same young men indulged in underage drinking, Brett.
(Of course, that was also the “Moral Majority” era, when the GOP and Jerry Falwell cemented their mutually beneficial relationship in favor of patriarchal authoritarianism over the rights of women and the non-heterosexual, so it didn’t surprise me that the original Northam yearbook photo was promoted by some semi-anonymous BUT THA BAYBEES!!! fetus fetishist looking to punish the governor for trying to separate religious stigma from medical science regarding abortion, either.)
The win record of pols who just refused to resign and went on apology tours is shockingly good. Vitter 2010, DesJarlais 2012, Sanford 2013, Menendez 2018… https://t.co/3dGwK1vQux
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 7, 2019
In the Trump era, the only way Republicans can win again statewide is for the Dems to be covered in scandal with a depressed base. (VA is strongly anti-Trump, now at least light Blue.) Hmm…Inside one week, all 3 D statewide officeholders are scandalized. Incredible coincidence.
— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) February 6, 2019
If the top three Dems in Virginia are swept, the state will get a man who's currently defending racial gerrymandering as governor. https://t.co/z5ZphYb0FR
— Marissa Horn (@MarissaL_Horn) February 6, 2019
I talked to a bunch of women who’ve worked in VA Dem politics over the last two decades, many of them nonwhite, who are furious that three dudes, two of them white, may be undoing all their hard work and grief-stricken about the potential policy fallout: https://t.co/VPP87mSFzU
— Cameron Joseph (@cam_joseph) February 6, 2019
Since some folks won’t be fully awake when they read this, let me state that the tweets below are snark...
How about this: Justin Fairfax resigns, Northam appoints his replacement, Northam & Herring resign, & new Virginia resident & new Virginia LG Merrick Garland becomes governor
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) February 6, 2019
Not only won’t he have to quit the DC Circuit, he’ll also get to be head of the Consumer & Financial Protection Bureau & the Office of Management & Budget. https://t.co/JJtIsPnlw4
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) February 6, 2019
seriously judging from things so far i have to assume that we'll end black history month with someone trying to bring back slavery https://t.co/mqDBtBIEmI
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) February 6, 2019
John Revolta
Is our Democrats learning?
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
Mary G
Don’t wanna go here again.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I don’t know. Maybe I’m crazy, but I wonder if we can’t bring some good out of all this. With everything that’s happened over the last week here in Virginia, I’m hopeful that maybe this can shatter the myth an awful lot of white people like to believe that racism is behind us, and that it’s all easy sailing from here on out. Casual racism is endemic. It doesn’t just go away because we passed a few laws. It takes a lot of hard work, and we all have a lot of introspection and soul searching to do.
This kind of thing doesn’t just wither away or die off by itself. It takes work. And up till now, this society has been unwilling to do the work.
Now, with this thrust before us in a way that we can’t deny or look away from, maybe we can at long last get to doing the work.
I don’t know. Maybe this can be the racial version of the me too movement—if we choose to make it that, and commit to making it happen.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
This belonged in the closed thread. It’s a partial shot of a contemporary editorial about the photographs that John posted.
Baud
Are people actually asking for Herring to resign? His actions and response seen non-resignation worthy.
raven
@Baud: Of course “people” are.
rikyrah
Here is a picture that should be with this post..
https://twitter.com/JulieCareyNBC/status/1093224701114097666
The utter agony on this Elders face..I’m her entire being??
Is why some of us are Pissed at the blase, dismissive…
‘take one for the team’
Nonsense that has condescendingly been coming from some corners here.
I assure you that the Elder in that picture has had to swallow more shyt, and take more ” for the team” than you can imagine. Her LIFE has been about “taking one for the team team”??
So, you know where you can go…
Funny how White men get excuses…and Black folks get ” take one for the team”
rikyrah
@Baud:
Actually,the NAACP asked for his resignation yesterday
Baud
@rikyrah:
National or state? I can see why the national one would do it, but I don’t think that alone will have much influence.
But thanks for the info.
ETA:. I’m assuming there are state chapters.
Eljai
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I don’t think you sound crazy at all. You make some compelling points. It’s sobering, but hopeful, and has me thinking of my own commitment to the work and how I can do better.
Woodrow/Asim
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
No. FUCK, NO, this VA shitstorm isn’t that.
#MeToo works because there were, and are, finally consequences to sexual harassment because society takes it somewhat seriously. That’s all women and allies have been asking for.
And, even there, the fact that the originator — an African-American woman — of the term nearly got lost to history (yet again!) underlines that #metoo still is primarily about people who have a voice and privilege in society, and are also harassed/assaulted. Lacking that, #metoo is next to useless, esp. with the fights over VARA renewal. The ability to be taken seriously should not depend on the number of Twitter followers you have!
And this crap in VA is about the Democratic Party throwing away a powerful tool — social shame — that betters America, for “points” in the fight to keep VA Blue. As an African-American, I see what _will_ happen, because we’re so het up on “political calculus” and so scared we’ll lose to the GOP, rat-fucking or not:
The GOP will be unleashed to never, again, bring their racism to heel, or to push out harassers and assaulters. Why bother, if the Democrats allow shit like what the VA gang of 3 to get away with?
We’ll find out about all of their dirty laundry, and stew here in the comments as they keep their offices, no matter how horrific the situation, and decry them. And they’ll point, very rightly, to our VA-based hypocrisy, knowing that when the chips were done, we did the political thing, not the right thing.
Moreover, we African-Americans will depress our turnout AGAIN, seeing that the Democratic support for us is skin-deep.
We could ride out the VA situation, fight for a “landing” that works — I still argue, for example, that Fairfax can and should get an investigation. But the people who’ve owned up to blackface need to go, or else we might as well sign away the only true power the Democratic Party has — our moral center and claims to support the diversity of Real Americans.
Sure, rat-fucking sucks. But that’s only a reason to have better vetting _and_ more diverse candidates, not to burn away every advantage to keep one state.
Barbara
@Woodrow/Asim: I disagree. I want expanded voting rights and fair redistricting. I am incredibly pissed, but I am not ready to give up literally everything we’ve been working towards for the better part of a decade in Virginia by handing power to an outright racist whose goal will be to suppress minority voters and blunt the impact of their votes.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Woodrow/Asim: Do they have to go right this minute? Or can we give them a week or so to work out some way around handing the VA government over to the GOP? To find someone willing to take the Lt. Gov. job for the next few months who isn’t going to be mired in scandal as soon as their name is put forward?
Someone actually in VA, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the new Governor would appoint a replacement Lt. Gov., who would serve until a special election in November. I haven’t seen anything about the Lt. Gov. needing to be approved by the General Assembly the way a new VP would have to get through Congress. That’s a lot of stuff to swing into motion on pretty short notice.
If Herring resigns, he’s replaced by a Rethug. So his resignation coming last, after the Gov/Lt Gov is straightened out, is the only way to even make a stab at protecting voting rights.
I wish I thought enough of Northam after that disaster of a press conference to think that he’s a party to such efforts, but I would like to think that the VA Dems are smart enough to be making plans while he flails.
low-tech cyclist
@Baud:
Derrick Johnson, head of the national NAACP, has called for Herring’s resignation.
It doesn’t matter whether these things happened long ago, or whether they pale next to things that contemporary Republicans do routinely.
What matters is that a lot of people of color in Virginia are upset about Northam and Herring, a lot of women are pretty unhappy about Fairfax, and the entire Virginia legislature is up for election in less than 9 months, because they do these things on the odd-numbered years in Virginia.
A week ago, Dem prospects to take control of Virginia’s legislature this fall appeared to be excellent. If Northam, Fairfax, and Herring try to ride this out, can you say “depressed turnout”? You bet you can. It’s a question of whether they’ll put their own well-being ahead of that of their party and of the Commonwealth, and it looks like that’s exactly what they’re doing – screwing Virginia in order to hang onto their jobs.
To avoid disaster this fall, they’ve got to do the right thing, and reasonably quickly. There has to be a plan to put a different set of Democrats in those offices by staggering resignations and appointing new Lieutenant Governors, the first of whom becomes the new Governor when Northam steps down.
The Democratic caucuses in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates need to decide who should hold these offices, and what the plan should be to get the right people in them.
daveNYC
It’s a lose-lose-lose situation.
1) Nobody resigns and you have two guys with blackface and one sexual assaulter as the top Democrats in VA.
2) Everybody resigns and you get a Republican in charge during redistricting, in addition to whatever other shenanigans he gets up to.
3) Timed resignations to get a Democrat successor and it’s the sort of gaming the system the Republicans usually get up to.
Pick your poison.
Baud
@low-tech cyclist: I don’t think Northam will resign, so none of them will resign. The impact will be what it will be.
randy khan
@daveNYC:
#3 isn’t so bad, honestly. The vast majority of voters wouldn’t care in the slightest about the gaming, and some of us would applaud it.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Northam or Herring is resigning, unless something more comes out about one or both of them.
low-tech cyclist
I can see an argument for leaving Herring in place, but not promoting him to governor.
But I really think the VA Dem legislative caucus needs to get together and decide what the plan is, then tell Northam/Fairfax/Herring what the plan is, and that the Dem legislators going to camp out on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion until he and Fairfax and Herring agree to it.
randy khan
One thought: If Fairfax resigns (and I think it’s possible he resigns and the others don’t), Northam had better replace him with someone who’s black.
Woodrow/Asim
@Barbara: When the people who will be most impacted by such racists are saying “get the Gov/AG out”, don’t you think we who have skin in the game might, actually, be listened to? I have my issues with the National NAACP, but 100% agree with their assessment of these situations.
This idea that compromised people can be a bulwark against “actual racists” is a bad, bad idea, built upon shoddy ideas of how racism works in America — esp. American politics. For one — imagine how crappy an advocate for Civil Rights Sen. Byrd would have been, had he hidden his KKK memberships, then tried to downplay them when it came out?
And that leads to:
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I said, in my post:
Do NOT take my anger, and belief in doing the right and moral thing, for an inability to also understand we need to find a resolution that works for as many people as possible. I can only hope that’s what’s happening in the “halls of power”, today.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@rikyrah:
Why I’m appalled to read some of what I’ve read here, from people who have not had that life, nor have their kin. I can’t discuss it rationally.
daveNYC
@randy khan: Herring staying put might be a viable option too as he made a legitimate apology and the president of the Loudoun NAACP chapter (Herring is a member of that branch) said he should not resign. I’m not sure how that’s going over with everyone else in Virginia since the national head came to a different decision.
Options 1 and 2 should be absolute non-starters, but even option 3 means the Democrats are going to take a hit.
Baud
@Woodrow/Asim: I hope so too.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@daveNYC: Let me add Number 5 which is pretty clearly part of the Replican plan here
4) Liberal turn out is depressed by scandals while Conservative turn out is increased by the fear among white men of the lack of mercy they can expect.
Seriously, were do you idiots get off thinking that other people with vote for the destruction of their lives.
Emma
I am one of those people that thought first about losing the state. Mea culpa. All I can offer in my defense is that I have grown utterly terrified of what will happen to this country if the Republicans re-consolidate their hold on states that are just now starting to turn blue. Historians have had their noses rubbed into how easy it is to tumble into dictatorship, and I have personal experience with it. So that’s the first thing that surfaced: sheer panic.
Barbara
@daveNYC: #3 isn’t poison, but it’s almost impossible to pull off. My view right now is that the only thing that matters is redistricting. That’s it. Pushing for expanded, no excuses early voting is second. So, yeah, Fairfax resign, Northam appoint successor and then resign would be wrenching but doable. Personally I don’t think Herring should resign because (a) his conduct wasn’t nearly as culpable, (b) he made a genuine apology and (c) he has been on the front lines trying to protect civil rights his whole tenure and clearly is not the callow 19 year old who dressed up as a rapper. The NAACP itself has lost a lot of luster because of internecine power struggles and whatnot.
But seriously, I doubt if Northam will resign, and my guess is that he definitely won’t resign before the Fairfax situation is clarified. And really, I think that’s probably okay. I am sincerely not discounting anyone’s anguish, but if the choice is between letting the casual racists win and the dedicated racists win just in time to make sure gerrymandering gets entrenched for another decade, I guess I am going with the former, at least until we can engineer a better outcome through staged resignations.
The Midnight Lurker
@rikyrah: Thank you posting this picture. I saw it, lost it, and searched everywhere.
This one photo entirely encapsulates how EVERY Democratic operative is feeling.
And we can blame Republican dirty trickers all day long, but at the end of that day, they’re just doing what we do. Ultimately, the blame for this mess lies with the men who created in the first place.
I could horsewhip Northam and Herring.
daveNYC
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Er… I kind of lost the thread with your last sentence there.
@Barbara: I meant ‘poison’ in the sense that timing resignations and replacements so there’s a Democratic replacement will be pounced upon by the usual suspects as evidence of the Democrats undermining democracy or some garbage. Not that the Republicans wouldn’t do all that and run over their grandmothers in order to win and keep power, but IOKIYAR and all that.
sherparick1
@rikyrah: So you want Howell as Governor?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Woodrow/Asim:
Yeah, me too. I’ve just had a feeling that very few here have actually looked at the Virginia laws. I know my first reaction when all three were hit by this was to think there was no alternative to keeping all three in place for now, since I cannot imagine the current General Assembly allowing a replacement Lt Gov.
If they don’t find a way to force Northam out, I can see trying to use this to drive turnout up this November. Take the speakership and thereby take over all of the line of succession, and the options expand for replacing them all with something better.
Barbara
@daveNYC: I don’t know whether you live in Virginia. If you did you would realize that we have spent an entire decade digging out from the impact of Bob McDonnell’s governorship, which cemented Republican power of state government even though Republicans have failed to win a statewide federal office since 2004. They did it through gerrymandering the state legislative chambers so that even blowout victories at the state level didn’t return control of the General Assembly to Democrats. The Senate is up this year. There is palpable Republican panic at losing control of both chambers. Northam is now a disgrace, but resigning now means tossing more power to a guy who has said publicly that he views redistricting as a way to thwart African American voters. He will probably use it to roll back new protections for women who need access to abortion as well. So, to put it more bluntly, if the choice is between Northam and a Republican alternative, I know which way I would go, at least until we figure a better alternative. There could be a new Senate majority next year. That would allow for more breathing room. Also, I think there is an opportunity for those who want to take it to force Northam to pay more attention to civil and voting rights.
sherparick
@Woodrow/Asim: So you want to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (what John Roberts has left of it) because LBJ signed it?
I hate this shit sandwich, but those thinking of “staggered” resignations are fantasizing. It’s these three in office or Howell as Governor. And turnout will still be depressed for Democrats in November 2019 and a Trumpist State Government will do its best to make sure they will only need 40% of the electorate to rule the state going forward..
Kylroy
@daveNYC: Northam was 22 at the time, photographed in either minstrel blackface or a Klan hood. He started by admitting and minimizing, then changed his story when that didn’t make it go away. He needs to resign, mostly for the way he handled this revelation in the current day.
Herring was 19 at the time, personally admitted to doing a tasteless Kurtis Blow costume, and said it was a mistake. I don’t know what course of action he could have taken, post age 19, that would have prevented calls for his job.
Barbara
@rikyrah: Let me say: I don’t want you to take one for the team anymore than I want to take one for the team once again. Taking one for the team is what I did when I was asked to canvass for a guy who opposed abortion rights because he would add to the Democratic base in the General Assembly. I didn’t like doing that and it didn’t even really work. I think there is a meaningful distinction between asking people to affirmatively vote for a person in spite of defects, and asking for that person’s resignation when you know it would elevate an even worse person to power. That’s not my idea of taking one for the team. That’s just doing what’s needed so you can work for a better outcome. And believe me, I am going to think long and hard before I ever vote for a guy like Northam. I am just asking that we not take five steps backward in trying to come up with a resolution.
sherparick
@Barbara: As Virginia resident and Democrat, I wish I could kick all three of these guys in the butt. And I would have liked this stuff to have come out before they had run for office. https://abcnews.go.com/beta-story-container/Politics/rep-bobby-scott-learned-lt-gov-justin-fairfax/story?id=60898781
Barbara
@sherparick: Yeah, me too. I think Herring’s conduct is being magnified because of Northam’s much worse conduct, but still . . . .
daveNYC
@Barbara: I think my point is that the Democrats should do whatever is necessary to hold on to the governorship of Virginia, but no matter what they do they will take a hit. They’re going to get dinged regardless, might as well hold on to power in the process.
@Kylroy: There’s a big difference between what they did (blackface: bad, blackface while standing next to a guy in a Klan oufit: worse) and how they reacted (whatever the hell Northam was pulling was clownshoes).
Barbara
@daveNYC: Agreed they will take a hit. You can be sure I will be asking Rip Sullivan, my rep, whether HE ever appeared anywhere in public with blackface that wasn’t some kind of cosmetic treatment (which is the only time I have ever applied anything to my face that made it temporarily darker).
Gex
@Emma:
What white people fear happening in America is pretty much what it HAS BEEN for black people.
rikyrah
@daveNYC:
#3
EthylEster
@Kylroy wrote:
How about fessing up BEFORE somebody else got caught?
I am hoping that one of the results of this fiasco is that every dem candidate is told by the “party”: You have told us that you have never sexually harassed anyone and that you have never participated in hateful racial speech/action. If we find out later that this is false, we will denounce you and drop you like a hot potato. Clear?
Brickley Paiste
Having women and girls dying from illegal abortions in Virginia really is a small price to pay for winning at ¿Quien es mas woke?
Woodrow/Asim
@sherparick:
…What? I mean, I literally ref. Sen. Byrd as an example, from that time period, of someone who managed to right his ship.
To take your hypothetical: Were LBJ active today, I’d want him to fess up — BEFORE someone caught him out — to being a racist, to using the N word, to being an ass to the African-Americans who’ve worked and advocated for him.
And then, to push not just for better civil rights (ALL civil rights, not just “folks who look like me”) legislation, but also to use his status to push our society to examine our racist roots.
Why is this concept so hard for some folks, that they can’t grasp that it’s not the act, it’s the coverup — and lack of follow-thru — that hurts so damned much. Why force a choice that’s unnecessary just to keep a status quo that actually harms the very things we claim to stand for?
Emma
@Gex: I understand that and it is why I apologized. My catastrophe radar went off and I reacted in a panic. We must do the right thing and deal with the consequences.
Barbara
@Woodrow/Asim:
1. There will be no follow through if Republicans are in charge, just ever more creative forms of oppression.
2. Can we use this as a chance to force follow through?
3. I don’t think anyone at all is suggesting a cover up, for one thing, how would that even be possible?
I don’t want going five steps backward to be the price of finding out that we weren’t as far forward as we thought.
ProfDamatu
@Barbara: Agreed on the first point; however, in Northam’s case, I’m not convinced that there will be much meaningful follow through, given how badly he bungled the initial revelations.
I completely understand if black voters in VA feel the same about Herring; however, being a privileged white person, I tend to think that although it was very bad for him not to have come forward until the shitshow began (so it could easily be argued that he came forward not because it was right, but to try to save his own skin), his apology was much, much better – and as far as I can tell, he has actually been doing the follow-through during his time as AG.
Now, again, as Whitey McWhiterson here, I have ZERO standing to say if that’s enough, and I will defer to VA voters of color to decide whether his performance as AG is sufficient to allow him to stay in office despite having engaged in blackface – to decide whether his repentance is sincere. I am, though, like you, as a woman just sick thinking about what it’s going to mean for women in this state if Northam, Fairfax, and Herring all have to go. We could potentially lose control of the state for a generation, despite having a larger overall share of the vote; 400,000 people will likely lose the Medicaid expansion; vote suppression and gerrymandering…yeah. And I get that my anger needs to be directed at the three guys who ran for office despite having significant skeletons in their closet. Still, though, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.
(Not even gonna go there on Fairfax, except to say that if the allegation, which seems very credible, is true, well, as a woman it’s tough to accept having someone in office who committed a violent crime against a woman and who refuses to own up. But, again, given the intersectional issues here, I realize that although I’m entitled to an opinion, I should probably STFU about it. It’s not going to be a great look if, in the end, Northam and Herring hold on but Fairfax is forced out, regardless of the very different specifics of each of their offenses,)
Barbara
@ProfDamatu: Best outcome is more favorable composition of the Senate, which probably got somewhat more difficult, but certainly not impossible. That paves the way for better outcomes. I was at UVA at the same time that Herring was and I doubt if it even occurred to him that this might be considered offensive. As someone coming to Virginia, and then North Carolina, from a northern state, I was struck dumb by how open racially coded symbols were, and I was used to racism in my own world — but it didn’t have the open, official feel that it did in southern states.
ruemara
@EthylEster: Dude. That’s what Herring did. You mean Northam.