I agree now that he needs to go, partly because he didn't and partly because of his new claims of innocence, mixed with what I suppose is intended to be a pre-emptive confession of a different incident.
Live on MSNBC he is having a press conference.
He says now he never had a copy of the 1984 yearbook and never saw the page or the photo in his life until the other day when it first surfaced.
(Yesterday he said he is in it and put the photo on the page.)
He says that year in San Antonio he attended a costume party dressed as Michael Jackson and blackened his face for that party, winning a dance contest for something called "moonwalk", earning and apparently enjoying the nickname "Coonman," and he apologizes for all that.
He offers the helpful hint not to use more than a little shoe polish because "You can't wash that off." (!!)
He insists that he now realizes how offensive all that is to black people and apologizes for it, but insists the offense in what he confesses to is surely not equal to that of the photo of the Klansman and man in blackface in the yearbook, that he now denies is a photo of him.
He says he contacted people who would know and they said in that yearbook there were several photos on wrong pages, and thinks that explains how the photo got onto his page.
He says he will not resign.
He claims that his public record is anti-racist, reminding people he has called for state monuments to confederate leaders to be taken down and placed in museums.
(Placed in museums? Not publicly and enthusiastically destroyed?)
Joy of AM Joy has three other black people on with her (no whites), including Al Sharpton, all of whom reject Northam's every point, including the extent of moral difference he claims between dressing as Michael Jackson and bearing the nickname "Cooman" on the one side and dressing mockingly as a Klansman or the Klansman's victim on the other.
They are outraged he did not resign.
Meanwhile, all other Democrats are saying Northam's career is and should be over.
He may never get another black vote, and he was elected with 87 % of the black vote, the newsies say.
One of the guys talking to Joy is saying Northam should be impeached, Virginia's constitution providing for that in a manner similar to the federal government.
Though I don't actually see the crime here it might help drive him out, and anyway he should not be allowed to just walk away from this, now, and serve out his term as though none of this ever happened.
It's not over, and shouldn't be.
The whole thing, now, just seems way too Kavanaugh.
Justin Fairfax has so far not called for Northam to resign.
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