by I rarely talk directly about specific political races, but I live in Virginia where in less than a week there will be the most closely watched election in the nation for governor. It is very close, and the Republican, Ed Gillespie, might well win, even though his Dem opponent, Ralph Northam, leads by narrow margins in most polls. Sound familiar? Sure, but why am I going on about this?It is because even the pro-Dem national media seems to have bought into inaccurate characterizations of Northam's positions. Most specifically, Chris Matthews on Hardball just had a guest on and they both were repeating the false claim that Northam supports taking down all Confederate monuments in the state, although accurately noting that this is a tough issue in the Commonwealth that Gillespie has been
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It is because even the pro-Dem national media seems to have bought into inaccurate characterizations of Northam's positions. Most specifically, Chris Matthews on Hardball just had a guest on and they both were repeating the false claim that Northam supports taking down all Confederate monuments in the state, although accurately noting that this is a tough issue in the Commonwealth that Gillespie has been using to effect against Northam. If Gillespie wins, this issue will be part of it.
The problem is that Northam's position is not that they should all be taken down, although he has expressed dislike of the Confederate monuments. His position is that this is a matter of local control over locally controlled statues, which is the case. He has said he would take down those "at the state level," but there are very few Confederate monuments put up at the state level. As a matter of fact, current state law is against local control, asserting that local municipalities do not have the right to move such monuments. This is a live and hot issue in Charlottesville, where the city council voted to move the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson off public parks. However, they city has been blocked from doing so thanks to court rulings based on current state law. This effort to move the statues is what led to the demonstrations and rioting and death in Charlottesville in August.
Of course the latest is that a Latino activist group has been forced to withdraw an ad against Gillsepie since the terror attack in New York yesterday. That ad showed minority children running from a pickup truck with a Confederate flag flying and a pro-Gillespie sign on it. Sure, nasty, but then we did see somebody killed by a Nazi running a car over somebody. Yeah, the ad was pushing the edge, but the hard fact is that the GOP has been running nasty and false ads against Northam relentlessly, which I am sick of seeing, which may be why I am boring everybody with this whiney post.
So, the Gillespie ads have been charging Northam with supporting the MS-13 gang, with horrendous photos of prisoners in El Salvador covered with ugly tattoos, with charges that Northam supports sanctuary cities, of which there are a big fat zero in Virginia. There have also been scads of ads from the NRA against Northam, although some of these look sort of silly, at least to somebody like me who does not like the NRA. So they have one where they show Northam saying, "I have a D- rating from the NRA," with them then shattering that with "False! He has an F!" but he was speaking to people against the NRA and he has spoken strongly against the NRA, but clearly the NRA is trying to get its people out to vote.
Another worry I have is a supposed "boredom" reported by WaPo about the race, which is why I worry that this darned New York terror attack and all these statues and NRA ads will get the Trump supporters out while the Northam people sit at home going "ho hum" like we have seen in so many off-presidential years. I admit that I shall be totally disgusted if the GOP pulls this off with their awful ads and hypocrisy, aided by stupidity on the part of the national pro-Dem media, which would be a really unpleasant reminder locally of what happened nationally a year ago.
Barkley Rosser