Absent a coherent saleable agenda, the Democratic Party has tried to cobble together every group angling for special legal and financial privileges. Now that cobbled-together collection is crumbling. Worse, as the governor of Virginia showed us this week, honesty about what really takes place in the late-term abortions that the radical feminists want repulses many voters who had not been paying attention and were swayed by imprecise linguistic explanations. And as the attention was drawn on him, the racial fault lines in his state came into full focus, despite the media’s best efforts to hide them.

Abortion: A Person’s not a Person if He's Quite Small

Beginning with New York, the Democratic agenda of giving the most radical of feminists anything they want for political advantage became clear. More women than men vote and it’s increasingly clear the craziest of them are the most influential. The New York law, for anyone who paid attention, is appalling, even to those who in time accepted the Roe v. Wade decision. Polls by the Marist Institute and Gallup consistently show that a vast majority of Americans support significant abortion restrictions and oppose abortions after three months gestation. My friend, “Old Lurker” closely examined that legislation. The changes in the bill to existing law includes these things: anybody permitted by the state can perform a no-questions-asked abortion up to 24 weeks; and an abortion can legally be performed on a nine-month-old baby if, in the opinion of the person performing it, the mother would be better off if it is done. There is no longer a duty to provide medical attention to a live born baby who survives the abortion and it can be left to die.  Governor Cuomo was so happy about this the lights on the top of One World Trade Center were flashed on in pink. (A bill introduced in Vermont would go even further.) 

I expect lots of people missed how revolting the practice was until Virginia tried to pass such a law. It narrowly missed passage despite the absurdity of its sponsor advancing at the same time a bill to protect the life of an insect.  

Governor Two Step 

Democratic governor Ralph Northam made the mistake of answering truthfully the consequences to the child of a late-term abortion who happens to survive the process were the bill to pass. If the child is born deformed they’ll make it comfortable and resuscitate it if needed. The woman and her doctor will decide whether to kill it.  The sponsor, Kathy Tran, made clear the abortion could be performed under her proposal if the mother was already dilating -- that is, in the throes of giving birth.

Here’s Northam on Wednesday:

“If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother,” Northam said in a WTOP interview.

In other words, it permits infanticide. Northam, by the way, is a pediatric neurologist. 

Tran’s proposal, supported by Northam, strips from Virginia law the requirement that three physicians conclude this horrible procedure is necessary to preserve the mother’s health or life. And it would further do away with the requirement that late-term abortions must be performed in hospitals. (The latter change may reflect the fear that no ethical physician or hospital would do this.)

Once the fiction of abortions involving only clumps of tissue was exposed, backlash ensued.

But Governor Northam’s troubles were just beginning. The blog site Big League Politics published a picture on Northam’s Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook page dated 1984 which shows two men -- one in blackface and one in a KKK outfit. Neither is identified, but it was on his page, and there is no indication he ever claimed in the (over three) decades which followed its publication that one of these men was not him or that the yearbook editor somehow mixed up the pictures. The media did its best to provide cover for him. CNN ran the story over a chyron which identified Northam as a Republican and the Washington Post which spent forever dissecting Brett Kavanaugh’s high-school yearbook said it was unfair to judge Northam by his medical school yearbook. 

So, it’s unfair to do this regarding the yearbook of a grown man in the year he graduates from medical school, but fine to do it to a high-school kid.

Nevertheless, taking the Washington Post’s line of defense, there is plenty more to suggest Northam is an actual racist -- more than there was for the Post’s long-running nonsense in 2006 about George Allen’s calling a pesky oppo researcher a “macaca” or implying that Donald Trump, who in 1986 was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor (along with such luminaries as Rosa Park and Mohammed Ali) for his work in advancing brotherhood and tolerance, was a racist.

Northam beat Ed Gillespie in the gubernatorial race, charging that Gillespie and those who supported him were racists, even going so far as to run an ad of a driver in a truck with a Gillespie flyer trying to mow down minority children. 

Luckily for Northam, the media was not at all interested in his background or even his own conduct during the 2017 campaign, where three weeks before the election he removed from flyers the name and photograph of Justin Fairfax, the black man running on his own ticket for lieutenant governor. In 2016, Fairfax was denied a speaking slot at the Democratic Party of Virginia’s state convention and dinner. 

Earlier in his race for lieutenant governor, Northam refused to shake the hand of E.W. Jackson, a black opponent. While it might be argued that he merely didn’t see the offer, closer examination of the video shows he was nudged on the hand and leg and pointedly ignored the offer. The video is here;  you decide. 

Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media details even more accusations of racism that Northam threw at Gillespie and Republicans.

He sent out a disgusting mailer (which I received in the mail) tying both President Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie to the white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va.

Later, an ad presented Gillespie as a genocidal white supremacist. Northam reported the ad as an "in-kind" donation to his campaign.

The current governor at the time, Terry McAuliffe, accused Gillespie of having run the "most racist" campaign in Virginia history. Yes, he suggested Gillespie's campaign was more racist than the secessionist movement supporting slavery, the segregationists, and the opposition to interracial marriage. That's how ridiculous it got.

By Friday, the heat was on Northam and he responded on twitter with an apology video in which he said,” I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now.” On Saturday, he seems to have deleted that tweet.

Steve Lookner
‏Verified account @lookner

VA Governor @RalphNortham appears to have deleted his apology video from Twitter in which he admitted he was in the photo. Saturday he refused to resign, admitting that he once blackened his face while in college for a dance but suggesting he was not in the photos.

CNN:

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said he does not believe he is either person in the racist photo that appeared in his 1984 yearbook but that he did once darken his face to resemble Michael Jackson during a dance contest in 1984.

In a remarkable, hour-long news conference at the Governor's Mansion in Richmond, Northam defended himself from the cacophony of calls for his resignation, but acknowledged that he had made mistakes on race in his past, like when he darkened his face for the dance contest.

"I believe now and then that I am not either of the people in this photo," Northam said, denying that he had ever worn a KKK robe and hood or been drunk enough to forget a moment like this. "This was not me in that picture. That was not Ralph Northam."

Whether he’s eventually forced out of office or not, the Virginia Democrat’s position on expanding the parameters of legal abortion are unlikely to change. Fairfax, who would become governor if Northam resigned or was removed from office, is as big a supporter of this as is Northam.

It’s Not Over till it’s Over

And it’s far from certain that he won’t be forced out of office -- not for endorsing infanticide, mind you, but for the yearbook photo. Prodded to life, the Washington Post finally paid attention and started sleuthing about it.

Joan Naidorf, whose husband’s yearbook page is opposite Northam’s in the yearbook, said she was surprised the photos are only now coming out, given Northam’s stature in Virginia politics.

“We’ve often wondered over the last 10 years or so why someone didn’t dig this up sooner,” said Naidorf, a nonpracticing emergency room physician who lives in Alexandria…

Eastern Virginia Medical School allowed students to pick their own photos for their yearbook page, Naidorf said. Her husband chose their engagement photo and other personal pictures. Another student chose a picture of men in blackface and dressed as women in what appears to be a variety-show routine.

On the one hand, the pro-abortion crowd has a perfect backup if Northam leaves office. On the other hand, black interest groups, which like Planned Parenthood contended on Friday that Northam should resign, would love to see a Governor Fairfax. The question is whether the party that kept Fairfax from speaking at its convention and kept silent when his visage was removed from campaign flyers is confident enough that its members wouldn’t bolt at the notion of a black governor.