Gillespie is probably already on the phone to his oppo research firm, demanding his money back.
Josh Lyman would have been all over it.
I voted for him and like the job he’s done so far, but he should step down.
I just don’t think I can jump on board with asking him to step down over an almost 40-year-old photo of him in blackface/in a KKK hood in what is clearly a jocular display. I say this as a staunch conservative. If he had been pictured at a KKK rally, or had been wearing blackface at some kind of political rally, there’s a stronger argument there, but this is a yearbook photo.
Again, I say this as a pretty strong conservative. If the new standard is to judge our elected officials on tasteless photos from decades upon decades ago in context that clearly doesn’t represent true evil, we’re all in for a rough time. We need to be reasonable about this.
What the hell is a coonman?
Maybe in a vacuum, but in today’s America? With a white supremacist tolerator and enabler in the WH, and a deadly white supremacist attack just about a year ago in VA? Virginia needs a governor with the moral authority to oppose white supremacism as effectively as possible.
It’s presumably a nickname he acquired as a direct result of that outfit.
Yes, and it’s because he withheld this information during the campaign.
Agreed.
This whole thing is just ghoulish the more I think about it. With future elected officials having grown up saturated in social media, we’re in for a heck of ride.
C’mon, he was in *medical *school. He would have been 24 or 25 when this was published. That’s well beyond the “youthful indiscretion” threshold.
According to his Wiki page, he was born in 1959. So, 24 or 25 years old indeed.
Dude needs to go.
I vote dem and I am dem, but I didn’t ever think I’d support Dixie Crat.
To me, it’s about being consistent with the outrage. If this had been a Republican politician, many of us (myself included) would have been calling for him to resign.
I have no dog in the actual fight, as I don’t live in Virginia, but he should step down, and the sooner, the better.
People are floating the conspiracy theory that Northam disrupted the abortion narrative with his remarks on the subject, and so suddenly this photo has surfaced to get rid of him. Igniting the passions of the pro-life segment with “infantacide” and “late-term abortion” talking points is undesirable, the theory goes.
Super tinfoil hat stuff, but interesting nonetheless. Really odd that this photo never surfaced until now.
Yeah. He never mentioned this little ticking time bomb to his campaign staff? He did, and they said “Yeah, go ahead and run anyway”? He forgot all about it until just now? Only the first one sounds remotely plausible, at least to me.
I don’t live in Virginia, so my opinion doesn’t count, but if I did, I’d want him to resign. I’m sure there’s at least one other person qualified for the position who doesn’t have that baggage weighing him down.
No doubt a lot of people will be filtered out by what they’ve said and done on social media. Is that a bad thing? Our elected officials are only a very small fraction of the population, and they should be better than us as a whole. It’s inherent in the concept that we must filter the population very aggressively in order to choose our leaders. Is this a worse filter than whatever else we’d be using?
Yes, obviously this was meant as a joke. And what that tells us is that he’s the kind of guy who finds this sort of thing funny. Given the choice of a politician who finds this sort of thing funny or one who doesn’t, I’ll take the latter.
Yeah but it was 35 years ago. I’m super not comfortable with this standard. Context matters. Like, I’m super pro-life with reasonable concessions (12 weeks seems reasonable to me) so there’s no love lost if this guy goes, but are we really going to judge 59-year-old Governor Ralph Northam on 24-year-old Med Student Ralph Northam? Are we not allowed to view individuals on how they’ve behaved and acted for all of their adult lives save a few years?
It’s extremely disquieting. We pluck a photo out from 35 years ago and that wipes away everything he stands for and everything he fights for? His job as a Governor and his work on the issues in that role comes down to a 35-year-old tasteless photo?
I’d be making these same arguments for a Republican or a Democrat.
I’m not sure I follow - is the conspiracy theory that a pro-choice Democrat has always known about this, and has now put it out there because they don’t like how his comments have influenced the debate?
Maybe that’s “tinfoil hat” stuff, I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem any stranger than the fact that it didn’t come to light when he was running.
Basically. The major cog that seems to be turning the machine is the fact that this photo only just came out now, days after he ignited a firestorm of debate over “infanticide”. And that discussion really shifted the abortion debate into an extreme area that favors pro-life talking points.