See I don’t think this is actually true. I think if someone was a racist, and ran on a platform of anti-racism, admitting the past and moving past it, that can actually work. It’s one of the ways we get anti-gang, anti-white supremacy and the like as activists, spokes people and yes local politicians.This is not what he did. In order to claim someone is a reformist, you actually have to be a reformist not just someone who voted once or twice on something you think helps a group you once mocked while hiding that whole past part.
Yeah, this definitely seems to be the case… Although i don’t know if i can understand it.
Do people think he’s racist NOW? If not, then why would it matter? If you think he was racist previously, but now is reformed, why would he be disqualified? How would it prevent him from being a good governor?
I don’t really understand what you’re arguing here.
It’s true that slavery was widespread in the past. What that means is that either slavery is not actually evil, or people were more inclined to do evil in the past. For me it’s pretty obvious which of those two alternatives is true, but apparently not for you. Do you mean to say that slavery was not evil until it was?
As for my choice, the relative paucity of slavery is IMO not because people are less evil individually, but because they are less evil socially. Lots of people would have slaves today if there wasn’t an entire legal and social regime against it.
Yes. It’s obvious he’s guilty, and if he can’t say he’s guilty without lying about it, then he is the same person he was when he did this racist shit.
Because he was caught out, which leads me to doubt his sincerity. It would be completely different if he had brought this matter forward himself years ago.
So you do think he’s racist?
Didn’t he have some sort of actual history in terms of policy on this kind of thing prior to earning your support in the Virginia gubernatorial race?
That he hid it says he probably hasn’t changed a whole lot.
It’s entirely possible he forgot he even did it, but… eh… if you’re going into politics that’s the sort of shit you remember basically forever.
Of course he could always change parties and then everyone would forget it even happened and he could hang out with every person in the caucus for photo ops.
That’s something I love about the Dems, the lack of hypocrisy. Someone does something that you would normally criticize the opposition of doing? No making excuses, just GTFO. Love it.
I supported him because he was a Democrat :)
Is he a racist? Well he kept quiet about this incident for years and that has now certainty caused racist hurt by having those images splashed over screens across the country. That was created by him by his inaction which he surely knew would lead to such hurt.
As I mentioned previously his first apology and frankly almost deranged second news conference has me seeing him as simply ruing his luck rather than remorseful.
Hey it’s only been 150 or so years since the Republicans freed the slaves! Got to give them credit.
And in a Republican world, credit means a daily thank you and loyalty until the end of times
I heard that on TV this morning and almost spit out my oatmeal. Nice job with historical context, Dana.
Same reason we threw Franken under the bus. There’s an instinctive feeling that any whiff of hypocrisy will redound to Trump’s benefit, and honestly I understand that concern.
Thanks for reminding me about Franken. RIP Franken. I miss you.
Hey, you can talk the talk, or walk the walk.
Northam was running against Ed Gillespie, who himself had just beaten the very non-ambiguously racist Corey Stewart. Northam (and his surrogates) tried really hard to tar Gillespie with the racist-by-association brush, even though he only mostly deserved it.
If Northam had been forthcoming about this crap, been honest about it, been up-front about it… it probably wouldn’t matter right now. Admitting to “victimless” racial shenanigans, expressing regret over being so mindlessly insensitive, and highlighting how much - much like the country at large - they have changed would have gone a long way towards humanizing Northam… who was criticized for being (ahem) pretty colorless during the campaign.
Again, the cover-up is worse than the crime.
One of the key aspects to making up for a past like this IMO is a lengthy track record of doing better. So if Northam had just admitted this, acknowledged his past bad deeds and grasped the nettle, given his more recent but still pretty lengthy track record of (apparently) being reasonable on race issues, I would be much more willing to allow him to continue in office, albeit with a much more skeptical eye on racial issues.
However, the way he handled this was just poor, and IMO he has to go.
Yes, hypocrisy is bad.
But you can simply have a more thoughtful, well founded platform that doesn’t result in eating your own, while still being entirely consistent.
For instance, it’s possible for you to support someone who did racist things in the past, if they are no longer racist. Doing so does not mean that you are equal to someone who supports Steve King, who is CURRENTLY a turbo racist.
Ya, this may be the case. Likely it is, as self announcing such stuff always turns out better.
But the flip side of this is that he genuinely may not have been aware of it. Neither me nor any of my friends saw our schools’ yearbooks when we graduated. I have no idea what’s in there. I assume nothing like this, since I don’t recall anything even remotely like that happening up in my school in Massachussets in the late 90’s. But I now feel like I should at least LOOK at some point. (spoiler: I have no idea how I’d even go about getting a copy now, so I won’t)
This seems like kind of a wiff, actually. I think Dan is trying to make some kind of weird point that the Patriots are just better than every other team, we shouldn’t try to drag them down to make them like every other team, Harrison Bergeron style.
But I guess his analogy is that rich people are just better than everyone else, and we shouldn’t tax them to drag them down? That doesn’t seem like an argument that’s going to appeal to most people?
But AOC comes back and says the players won’t pay the tax. But that doesn’t speak to Dan’s point about winning teams as analogy to rich people. Maybe she should have said something like “How interesting would football be if the Patriots had 1,000 players and all the other teams had only one player? Would you be interested in redistribution then?”