On July 30th, Virginia will celebrate 400 years of representative government at Jamestown Settlement near Williamsburg. The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation is hosting the event as part of their “American Evolution” celebration. This is a historic event meant to bring Americans together.

Why?

This anniversary marks 400 years since the establishment of Virginia’s General Assembly, the oldest contiguous legislative body in the New World. The Commonwealth celebrated 400 years back in 2007.

And you know who plans to ruin the occasion? Members of the national and Virginia Democrat parties.

They have promised to protest the event, which is nonpartisan, on the grounds that President Trump’s presence there would be an endorsement of the allegedly racist views.

The White House hasn’t commented yet if President Trump will address the event.

The Democrat Party of Virginia joined Democrat leaders of the House of Delegates and State Senate calling for a boycott of the event and send “Send. Him. Back”—in reference to chants of “Send Her Back” that broke out at Trump’s recent Greenville, NC rally. The president disavowed the chant shortly afterward.

We stand with @VAHouseDems @VASenateDems. There’s no room for @realDonaldTrump and his racism at the 400th anniversary of Virginia’s General Assembly.



Send. Him. Back. pic.twitter.com/twLpthXpw3 — Virginia Democrats (@vademocrats) July 20, 2019

Last August, Governor Ralph Northam (D-VA) invited a bipartisan group of lawmakers—from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to President Donald Trump— to join in on the festivities.

The August 2018 invite read, “Your presence and remarks on this important anniversary would be most appropriate.”

After Richmond Times-Dispatch reporters pressed the governor for comment on the proposed boycott, his office deferred them to the foundation. Why of course.

Gov’s office says this morning that Northam “strongly condemns President Trump's continued attacks on immigrants and the diversity that makes Virginia and America who we are.” — Graham Moomaw (@gmoomaw) July 20, 2019

The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation has stood by their decision to invite President Trump.

For all their screaming about racism, Virginia Democrats have yet to clean house on their own side of Ralph “Coonman” Northam, LG Fairfax, and AG Herring—two racial scandals for the governor and AG, sexual assault allegations for Fairfax, respectively.

Here’s a refresher on the calls for resignation of Virginia’s top three lawmakers that came back in February.

From CNN:

Nationally, Democrats have sought to adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward allegations of sexual assault and race amid the Trump presidency and the #MeToo movement. To have not one, not two, but three statewide elected officials in a swing state battling a variety of these charges — and with none currently signaling they will step aside — is a political nightmare for the party writ large.

A RealClearPolitics op-ed said:

Gov. Ralph Northam, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring have all forfeited the public’s trust, in my opinion, and should resign. That would create an unprecedented political mess — but it’s useless to speculate what might happen next, since all three are staying put. They seem to have decided there is safety in numbers.



In the Newsweek article “Resign, Resign, Resign: Virginia’s Three Democrats Must Go, Or They’ll Drag Their Party Down With Them,” Peter Roff said:

None of this is good news for the party that likes to preach how progressive it is on race and the treatment of women. The whole thing reeks of hypocrisy, too: Herring had called on Northam to resign after photos from the governor’s med school yearbook page began to circulate on the Internet, but so far appears reluctant to take his own advice, despite having admitted having done the same thing. Still, it’s not a foregone conclusion that Herring will be gone, along with Northam and Fairfax. … It’s a serious situation, and not just because three top Virginia Democrats have found themselves on the wrong end of the identity politics strategy that’s proven so successful for progressives in the age of Trump. It’s serious because it threatens to wreck the party’s chances to win all over the country in 2020. Every Democrat running for president, every Democrat running for U.S. Senate, heck, every Democrat running for dog catcher can now count on being asked all kinds of questions over the course of the next election, the answer to which could prove embarrassing if not career-ending.

Larry Sabato suggested the February revelations turned Virginia into the Commonwealth of Chaos:

Just think—almost one week ago, Lt Gov Justin Fairfax seemed to be hours away from being sworn in as VA Governor, with just about everyone calling for Gov. Northam to resign. Now Northam says he’s staying, and Fairfax may well be on the way out. #CommonwealthofChaos — Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) February 8, 2019

The top three lawmakers’ defiance to resign has arguably put the state party in turmoil, according to The Atlantic:

But despite the protests, and despite public calls since the beginning of February from Democrats in and out of Virginia for all three officeholders to resign, all three remain defiantly in power. The immediate backlash and cascading condemnations from politicians have subsided, giving way to an icy silence from the state legislature and a complicated dance of intrigues in the capital city. The potential disruption of the gubernatorial line of succession revealed rivalries among numerous factions vying to win the office in 2021. In the incestuous and insular world of the state Democratic Party, fragile truces have been broken, and conspiracy theories have tumbled from the dark corners of paranoid minds into the media. Although, for now, no top officials have resigned, the Democratic Party in Virginia is in turmoil.



Where are those calls for resignation of Virginia’s top three lawmakers now?

Crickets.

Turns out ceding power to Virginia Republicans would eat away at the gains here to flip the Old Dominion State blue. Now, state Democrats are happily taking money from Northam’s PAC again.

Hypocrites, the lot of them.

For all of our qualms about President Obama’s divisive and extreme policies, very few Republicans and conservatives called for boycotts of events he presided over.

If Democrats want to boycott this historic celebration of representative government here in Virginia, be our guest. The more they resist Trump, the more Trump wins.

Have fun with that.