Former Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) urged a step back from the “frenzy” surrounding Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), saying that his critics should pause their “rush to judgement” before forever condemning him to the “political death penalty.”
“Anderson, it all seems indefensible,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Monday night. “But there have been a series of these public shamings where we go into kind of a frenzy and we chew up and spit out the targets of our righteous indignation, and then we retreat into our, you know, corners where we’re ideologically comfortable, and it just contributes to more tribalism.”
“I think that if all these facts are the case, that Governor Northam will resign,” he continued. “But I do object to what may be somewhat of a rush to judgment.”
“We can find out who was in that picture,” he concluded. “We can find out how the picture got in that yearbook, and so before we subject somebody that high in office to resignation, which basically is the political death penalty, which means that all of his great-grandchildren, all of the Northams for generations to come, are going to know of Governor Northam as somebody who had to resign out of racism.”
Watch here:
Former congressman urges a pause in the “rush to judgment” to condemn Northam pic.twitter.com/vreUGSUtLQ
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) February 5, 2019
