Yesterday I spoke at the No Kings rally at the Williamsburg/James City County (WJCC) Courthouse, and thought I’d post a video of my remarks here.
Experts estimated the crowd at about six thousand people. I can tell you that protestors lined Monticello Avenue five or six deep for about a quarter mile or more, and many more gathered on the lawn next to the courthouse and the terrace where the speakers stood.
I can tell you that I saw elderly folks who clearly needed assistance to be there and still showed up. I spoke with middle-aged folks who remember Jim Crow and understand that Trump and his minions want to bring back oppression of out-groups and minorities of all kinds. And I engaged with young people who see very clearly that the system created by corporate capitalism simply does not work for them because they came too late to the party – the billionaires have already hoovered up all the wealth and they have no plan to share it or use it for the greater good.
The people I spoke with understand that MAGA is angry because Trump and his minions have lied to them about the state of the Nation and created fear in their hearts of people who live differently, love differently, and worship differently than they do. They lied to them so they can cripple the state, pervert law and order, and expand their fascist project of oppression.
Thanks to Heather Allen Meany and her team (looking at you, Rex!) for organizing this and creating a wonderful event with amazing speakers, including Lisa Vidernikova Khana (candidate for Congress in the First Congressional District, Ty Hodges (candidate for WJCC School Board), Diane Carter de Mayo (Chair of the Virginia First Congressional District Democratic Committee), Jason Moulenbelt (Marine Corps veteran and philosophy professor), Jessica Anderson (candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates in the 71st District), and Mark Downey (Pediatrician and incumbent Delegate and candidate for reelection in the 69th District).
None of these people were paid to organize this event. None of the protesters were paid to attend. Patriotic Americans – the real core of the American identity, those of us who believe in a Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all – showed up for free.
As you probably know, the big news in Virginia politics this week, are the texts that Jay Jones, candidate for attorney general, sent to Delegate Carrie Coyner back in 2022, discussing basically the murder of former House of Delegates Speaker Todd Gilbert and Gilbert’s children.
I know Jay Jones. It’s hard for me to believe that he wrote this even as a joke. I don’t understand it. He’s apologized. But, you know, the fact that it entered his head at all is problematic, much less that he put it in a text.
It goes without saying that wishing political opponents and their children dead over a policy disagreement is way outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse, even as a joke or a suggestion that “if they only suffer from their own policies, they might change their minds.”
We can and should do better. And yes, as both an expression of a thought that political violence has a place in policy disputes and as a demonstration of very, very poor judgment – the kind of poor judgement no one wants to see in an attorney general – disqualifies him. His rhetoric disqualifies him. But let’s take a step back and talk a little bit about political violence more broadly.
Yes, assassination certainly counts as political violence and is indeed perhaps the ultimate example. We should work to convince people that Charlie Kirk was wrong on the merits of his policy ideas and even his religion. Simply murdering him without warning violates our most fundamental values and ethics. It’s immoral, plain and simple.
That said, the America we know today was constructed on a foundation of political violence, starting with forced migration of Africans as slaves. The Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution, genocide against the indigenous peoples who lived here before Europeans arrived, and the attempt by the slave states to protect and expand the right to own human beings as property are all examples of political violence in our history.
Political violence continued after the Civil War in the form of Black Codes, Jim Crow, sundown towns, redlining, and other efforts to suppress the political power of outgroups. Our history is one long thread of political violence, mostly against the weak and defenseless, and mostly justified by those in power as necessary.
Today, ICE raids and the deployment of military forces to American cities look an awful lot like political violence designed to continue the suppression of groups and individuals seen by those in power as illegitimate political actors. The difference between the assassination of Kirk, or Jones’s rhetoric of murdered opponents is that, in this case, it’s agents of the State committing the political violence in our name.
Agents of the State invade apartment buildings. Agents of the state detain Americans without warrants or any kind of probable cause.
Agents of the state kidnap children in Chicago, some of them naked, and held them for no reason on the pretense of searching for gang members who were not there.
Agents of the state detain people, some of them American citizens, almost all of them lawful residents following the law and deport them to foreign prisons where they cannot apply for redress of this unlawful detention and deportation.
Agents of the state occupy cities on the false pretense of reducing crime where local governments have quite effectively reduced it without their assistance, and who have not asked for that assistance. We know they do this under false pretenses because they end up picking up trash, not fighting crime.
Now, for those of you who may have forgotten, these were key elements of the Founders’ grievances against the British Crown in 1776.
Quoting the Declaration of Independence:
“For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:”
For all the caterwauling by Jason Miyares, his running mate Winsome Sears, and Governor Youngkin about Jones’s violent political rhetoric, they all support political violence as long as it’s committed by agents of the state controlled by their Party.
Jones would push back against this. Miyares will not.
For this reason, although I believe Jones is not qualified by temperament or judgment to serve as Virginia’s Attorney General, I believe Miyares’ support for Trump and the anti-democratic Republican Party makes him even less qualified.
I therefore plan to vote for Jones and urge my fellow Virginians to do the same.
Once elected, I would then urge Jones to resign and allow the General Assembly to select his replacement. If Republicans control the legislature after the election, they can appoint Jason Miyares.
That’s my two cents on this subject, and that’s probably all I’m ever going to say about it again.
I can’t improve on Troxell’s explanation – he was in these meetings – so I won’t try. My crack at a TL;dr is that because this system limits the number of votes from each local Unit (even if it does not limit the number of delegates from each local Unit) it creates incentives for candidates to capture local unit delegations, as they would in a more…conventional…convention. Sorry.
As I read it, the minority faction fought for a primary because they believe their preferred candidate, Amanda Chase, can win the nomination with a 35% plurality in a large field. They’re less confident in her ability to win a majority at a convention with rank-choice voting. Of course, they frame the problem as “establishment RINOs” controlling the convention results to make sure Chase has no chance, but it’s not clear how including the broader GOP electorate across Virginia helps the most extremist potential nominee.
In any event, I followed the saga as it unfolded and I think it’s important to note that through the entire debate the core question focused on how to best keep opponents from voting. We see no willingness among any of these factions to form a coalition in support of a set of common goals based on commonly accepted social agreements. At every turn each one sought to expand access to their members and deny it to others.
When someone tells you who they are believe them – and the GOP is telling us that conservatives see a no path to power in building coalitions. Easier to simply shut opponents out of the electoral process altogether, and Republicans across the country have moved to do this to Democrats.
Screen shot from Facebook video of the February 23 Virginia Republican Party State Central Committee meeting.
The inner workings and various factions that make up Virginia’s Republican Party fascinate me, and I’ve been attending Tea Party meetings and following the debate between these factions pretty much since I moved to Hanover County in 2008. The short non-academic version is that a very active and motivated base has worked to take over the Virginia GOP for more than a decade. This base very much wants to enforce a kind of ideological purity that focuses far more on cultural issues than policy.
This intra-Party insurgency initially manifested itself in the capture of local Virginia GOP units by Tea Party activists after Barack Obama won the Presidency. Ideologically, this group is to the right of what I call “Chamber of Commerce” Republicans (defined as conservatives who want small government but want it to actually work). Think of this as the “conservatives lose elections because they’re not conservative enough” crowd.
Voting in Person, 2019 Photo Credit: R. Stanton Scott
An authoritarian figure who has joked about being President for life runs the Federal Government during a pandemic that could literally kill millions of Americans and disrupt society for months. States are postponing primary elections and struggling to figure out how voters can cast ballots while keeping social distancing. Understandably, some people worry that Donald Trump might take advantage of the crisis to stay in power.
Lots of journalists have written about this, including Evan Halper in the LA Times, Blake Rutherford for The Hill, and Chris Cillizza for CNN. The general assessment boils down to “Trump may be desperate with the economy in the tank but has no power to postpone elections. His term ends on 20 January 2021 even if he could, and the Presidential Succession Act kicks in if he isn’t reelected or replaced through a Constitutional election before that time.”
These discussions focus narrowly on two questions: whether States could physically hold elections during a pandemic using modern systems and what would happen if they couldn’t. Most agree that elections can take place if state legislatures hurry up and figure out how to use expanded absentee voting, other voting by mail systems, or even the internet. They also think that if for some reason elections cannot be held, someone other than Trump would take power based on existing statute.
What none of these articles mention is the Electoral College and the role of state legislatures in choosing these Electors. This is the group that actually elects the President, as we found out the hard way in 2016. These days voters choose these Electors by casting votes at polling stations or by mail because state legislatures want it that way – this is not a Constitutional requirement. This means that elections for President and Vice President can take place as long as state legislatures can meet and choose Electors before Election Day.
So conservatives who complain the loudest about “sanctuary cities” when it comes to immigration seem to be lining up to support “Second Amendment Sanctuaries” now that Democrats control the General Assembly. Yesterday I saw this first-hand at the Hanover and Westmoreland County Board of Supervisors meetings. Both Boards passed resolutions objecting to gun control laws that has not yet passed the General Assembly on the assumption they will infringe on Second Amendment rights.
Northam went on to say that he gave photos to the yearbook staff, did not participate in assembling his page, did not purchase a copy, and hadn’t seen it in thirty years. Publication blindsided him.
Maybe the yearbook staff placed the photo in question on Northam’s page by mistake and he genuinely did not know about this until yesterday. Which of course begs the question: why admit to being one of the people in the picture unless you remember wearing blackface or a KKK costume but cannot remember a specific? Someone out there might have photos of me that I’d prefer never became public, but I know one thing with 100% certainty: no picture of me in blackface or a KKK outfit exists. I’ve never worn either. Ever.
Northam’s admission that he wore blackface for a dancing contest, which he won with a Michael Jackson impersonation, doesn’t help. Dressing up like Jackson was common enough at the time – Jackson was on the Jackson’s Victory Tour and at the height of his fame. But he could have performed without the shoe polish makeup, and his claim that he “only used a little because it’s hard to get off” means he was familiar with the blackface concept (and likely knows photos of this exist that he wanted to get out in front of).
Perhaps we shouldn’t hold Governor Northam responsible for the photo appearing on his page – this kind of mistake happens. And I very much hope that Governor Northam was not in the photo. But I’m not sure it matters any more, even if this turns out to be a right wing hit job using a doctored photo or yearbook. That he couldn’t vehemently deny this based on his own memory says quite a lot. Northam’s denial this afternoon muddies the waters. But resignation remains the right course.
Like everyone, Northam is at least in part a product of the time and place of his upbringing, and his Eastern Shore youth and Virginia Military Institute college career apparently included problematic attitudes on race. Whatever his thinking on racial equality today, the Governor clearly had no problem joking about terrorizing or making fun of people of color in 1984. I would hope that Northam’s time in the US Army and as a pediatrician lead to some personal introspection and change.
But if he has truly adjusted his attitudes about human beings not like him he could have owned his past and used it as a way to help Virginia confront its own problematic history of slavery and resistance to desegregation. He could have turned it into a teaching point about ways to move America to racial equality. Instead, Ralph Northam either hoped no one would discover this disgusting photograph or forgot it altogether – which is problematic in itself.
We still pay for this sin – or at least people of color still pay. Even after the end of de jure slavery, de facto slavery in the form of Jim Crow laws, redlining and housing discrimination, voter suppression, and depression of education opportunities through segregated schools has kept families of color from building wealth and participating fully in American society. Efforts by white elites to socialize poor whites to fear poor blacks after the Civil War shows its effects through American attitudes about social safety nets and immigration still today. I don’t mean to suggest that the United States has not been a force for liberty and justice in the world. But America becomes more exceptional as such a force when we live by example for others, and we cannot do this without confronting this very real and very problematic history.
None of us has a perfect past, free of troubling actions, decisions, or attitudes. We all change as we grow, and I seriously doubt that Ralph Northam still holds views on race that would allow him to attend a party dressed in blackface or a KKK costume. He almost certainly has changed his attitudes about racial equality. As he became a prominent pediatrician and then politician, he had a unique opportunity to help Virginians have a discussion about its racial history and how people like him could overcome their past and help us move forward together. This may not have won him the Governorship, but it would have helped make Virginia a better place to live. Sadly, he forgot his past or chose to bury it instead.
This morning, Governor Northam will hold a press conference and will likely resign. He should.
