2 February 2019 — 1104 mst

Like Al Franken, Ralph Northam is getting
the bum’s rush from his fellow Democrats

Updated. It doesn’t take much to whip Democrats into a political lynch mob these days. Al Franken (D-MN) was hounded out of the U.S. Senate after he was accused of sexual harassment, and before his case was heard by the Senate’s ethics committee.

Now it’s Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s turn. As reported by the Washington Post and other news sources, Northam’s page in his medical school’s yearbook from 1984 displays a photograph of someone in blackface, and someone wearing a Klu Klux Klan robe and hood. The initial consensus was that one person in the photograph is Northam, although this afternoon he disputed that, while admitting that he appeared in blackface during a Michael Jackson lookalike contest. Democrats are demanding that he resign immediately.

Why the yearbook didn’t surface years ago when he entered politics is a mystery. It’s inconceivable that opposition researchers missed it. I find myself wondering whether someone has known all along and has been waiting to release it to settle a grudge or advance his own career.

A second question is whether we now live in an era of no forgiveness, no second chances, where youthful foolishness, legal but stupid, condemns a man for the rest of his life. Does an honorable adult life no longer redeem a man for a youthful mistake made 35 years ago? That’s the message that Democrats, in their high and mighty sanctimony and outrage, are delivering. It’s how the Taliban operate.

Will Northam survive as governor? I wouldn’t lay odds on it. Should he survive as governor? That’s a question for Virginians, who at this point more resemble a political hanging party than a thoughtful people who recognize and allow for the imperfections of humankind.