Embattled Governor Ralph Northam (D-VA) is counting on the establishment media to save him from having to resign, reports the National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar.

“Talked to a plugged-in Virginia Dem that’s skeptical Northam will resign — after watching Northam’s stubbornness today,” Kraushaar tweeted Saturday. “Says that from Northam’s POV, he’s already hit rock bottom. And noted that scandals have such a short shelf life in today’s politics/culture.”

In a follow up tweet, Kraushaar quoted a Democrat operative who is also counting on the media losing interested in the story: “I suspect this is out of the national news… by the middle of next week.”

“I suspect this is out of the national news… by the middle of next week," the Dem operative said. — Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) February 3, 2019

That is a pretty safe bet, actually.

At this point, the establishment media have two choices: They can keep the story alive in the hopes of forcing a resignation, but in doing so the ongoing damage to the Democrat Party as a whole will continue and there is no guarantee Northam will resign. Or the media can save the Democrat Party from further damage by moving on as quickly as possible to another scandal — say, a bombshell about Trump increasing his ice cream order from two to three scoops.

The best of all worlds for the media, of course, would have been Northam’s quick resignation. Get him out of there so Democrats can continue to pretend they hold the moral high ground on racial issues, which is important to a party (and media) that intends to use a relentless campaign of racial demagoguery against President Trump in 2020.

Without Northam’s quick resignation, though, the media are stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place.

They can let the story go, the establishment media can, but that doesn’t mean the end of the scandal. In this era of alternative media, the establishment media cannot assume no more rocks will be overturned when they are no longer America’s sole rock-turners. After all, it was alternative media that started all of this because it was alternative media that found the blackface/KKK photo on Northam’s yearbook page.

So while the media might try to move along in the hopes America forgets about Governor Blackface, the scandal still has all kinds of threads left to pull on, threads that could be potentially fatal to Northam.

Before we go any further, let me stop here and say the following: If Northam told the full truth at his Saturday news conference, if that is not him in the blackface/KKK photo, if he had nothing to do with including it in his yearbook, if he never saw the yearbook, if he doesn’t know where the nickname “Coonman” came from, and if all he is guilty of is a misguided Michael Jackson impersonation 35 years ago, he should NOT resign. He should hold his ground.

The idea that a 59-year-old man should end a lifelong career in disgrace over some shoe polish and moon walking 35 years ago, is nuts. I’m not defending a white guy blacking up. But intent matters and a misguided Michael Jackson impersonation is miles away from that disgraceful yearbook photo and miles away from choosing that photo be a part of your yearbook. However…

This story still needs to be chased down.

Unless they are public figures, we don’t need to know who is in the blackface/KKK photo. Let’s not make this a witch hunt against private citizens, but… Is that Northam or not? Considering the effort the media put into tracking down Brett Kavanaugh throwing a little ice 35 years ago, there is no reason this question can’t be answered.

We also need to know if Northam is telling the truth about not selecting the photo (regardless of who is in it) for his own yearbook page. According to the far-left Washington Post, a student who attended the same medical school at the same time as Northam said, “Eastern Virginia Medical School allowed students to pick their own photos for their yearbook page.”

What’s more, Northam arguing that is not him the photo and that he did not choose the photo for his yearbook, sounds ridiculous when you look at his actual yearbook page.

The page is dedicated to photos of Northam, and most of them look as though Northman would have had to submit them from a private collection. They are not photos of him at school caught by a shool photographer.

Then there is the quote, apparently from Northam, directly under the blackface/KKK photo: “There are more old drunks than old doctors in the word so I think I’ll have another beer.” In the blackface/KKK photo, both people are holding what looks like a beer can — which relates directly to the quote.

And my understanding about yearbooks is that if you don’t submit a photo(s) or quote, you are not included in a formal way. Inclusion requires participation and if we are to believe Northam, he was given a full yearbook spread of his own without his participation? And how in the world did a photo that is not him end up on his page? Where did the quote come from? Where did the three photos we know are of him come from?

Yes, there is all kinds of hot information to chase down here, but doing so means the scandal rolls on, doing so makes it awfully difficult to smear Trump as a racist over nonsense when the media’s own governor is a Democrat and appears to be the kind of guy who went to the drive-in with his college buddies to boo the Gene Hackman character in Mississippi Burning.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.