This is my official response to Mr. McCrory's press conference yesterday.

After ducking the press for months, Pat McCrory emerged from Art Pope's shadow yesterday with a too-little-too-late attempt to buff up his tarnished image. He did himself no favors. Not only did he demonstrate no understanding of his own policies in the area of unemployment insurance, he also proved himself inept in the fundamentals of executive leadership. As one Facebook friend wrote, he appeared to have the intellect of George W. Bush, without the charm.

On the unemployment front, McCrory showcased his leadership style by blaming the federal government for his own boneheaded decision to throw 70,000 unemployed North Carolinians under the bus last week. Fortunately, Mark Binker took the Governor to task with a surgical dissection of his prepared talking points related to debt, forgiveness, and grandfathering. The fact that Mr. Pope would allow Mr. McCrory make such a fool of himself in addressing this critical issue speaks volumes about the dysfunction inside his administration.

More troubling than his lack of technical knowledge, however, is Mr. McCrory's utter lack of understanding of the Moral Monday uprising.

McCrory said the term "Moral Monday" is a misnomer. "Listen, we should have respectful differences, but to say one is moral, which gives the reference that one is immoral, on a political dispute ... I think is quite misleading," he said. "I respectfully disagree with some of those who are protesting against me, but from that disagreement I'm not judging them on their personal character."

We are not judging you on your personal character, Mr. McCrory. We are judging you on your actions, which consistently place the interests of wealthy people and corporations over the interests of middle class and poor families. Those actions are morally reprehensible.

Finally, Mr. McCrory must be called out for his lack of leadership in the area of women's rights. As a candidate, he couldn't have been more clear that he would not support any legislation that further restricted abortion. Yesterday, however, his backpedaling was almost comical. Embracing Skip Stam's party line about protecting women's health, McCrory was clearly looking to cover his ass instead of taking a principled stand.

Back in 2012, lots of people voted for McCrory thinking he would be a moderate, competent leader. Boy were they wrong.