The Democrats' Access Hollywood moment

Here's why scandal-plagued Virginia Democrats aren't resigning

Ralph Northam, Justin Fairfax, and Mark Herring.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Eastern Virginia Medical School via AP, AP Photo/Cliff Owen, The7Dew/iStock, Screenshot/YouTube, AP Photo/Steve Helber)

If Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) were to resign tomorrow, following last week's revelation of old photos in which he appears to be wearing blackface, he would be replaced by his lieutenant, Justin Fairfax, who was recently accused of sexual assault; or, in the event that Fairfax also steps down, by the state's attorney general, Mark Herring, who just admitted to his own past enthusiasm for racist folk art. If all three go, who knows? I assume the Commonwealth will just be put on ice for a while.

Is the Jenga tower going to fall, though? Despite calls for his resignation from nearly every major figure in the Democratic Party, Northam is pressing on. So too, with the help of Brett Kavanaugh's lawyers, is Fairfax, whose response to the allegations was, if reports are to be believed, to mumble about "that bitch." Herring clearly thought he could get a leg up on the competition by leaking his own past appearance in minstrel-show attire. Clever. Nothing suggests that the Old Dominion triumvirate are going anywhere.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.