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Old habits die hard. And some habits never die at all, they simply change shape. Such is the case of the Democratic Party and racism – it’s their domain, always has been, and moreover it is their currency. (Just look at the anti-Semitism rampant in the freshman class of Democrats in Congress and how those Members are treated as stars.)

Democrats, for example, regularly declare the need for “a serious conversation about race,” they just don’t mean it. You can’t have a serious conversation about a topic when a stiff breeze tangentially related to the subject is immediately greeted with accusations of racism. Just like immigration reform, about which they did nothing when they had absolute filibuster-proof control of government, they don’t want action, they want the issue. And they play no issue as effectively as racism.

Meanwhile, blackface is apparently all the rage among Democrats in Virginia. Who dresses in blackface, even in the 80s? Governor Ralph Northam at first admitted and apologized for a picture in his medical school yearbook of him either wearing blackface so thoroughly applied it looked like the person bobbed for apples in used motor oil or a KKK outfit. Then he said it wasn’t him, like you could look at that picture and not remember if you’ve ever dressed like that. But, he said, he did put a little shoe polish on his cheeks when he dressed as Michael Jackson for a dance contest, which he claims he won, and for THAT he was sorry. This doesn’t pass the laugh test.

If you’ve ever seen Northam speak, he brings as much energy to an event as a dead skunk. You don’t win a dance contest at 25 and at age 59 make a house plant look like a speed freak by comparison. Was this alleged dance contest held in that town from Footloose or something? Was entry limited to Mennonites and Fonzi?

Nevertheless, Northam has decided he’s not going to apply the standards to which Democrats hold everyone else and refuses to resign.

Instead, he’s embarked on a “listening tour” of the state he’s supposed to be leading. He also told the Washington Post he wants “sensitivity training” for nearly everyone. “First of all what I plan to do ... is to make sure that we have sensitivity training — in our Cabinet, in our agencies. I also plan to reach out to our colleges and universities and talk about sensitivity training. Even into the K-12 age range, that’s very important,” Governor Blackface said.

The thing is, only Ralph Northam committed this “sin” he’s forcing everyone else to atone for. Kindergarteners didn’t rock minstrel blackface, the governor did. But the teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic have to be put on the back-burner in order to teach kids something that likely never occurred to them is wrong.

In a fit of comedy, the state’s Attorney General, a guy named Mark Herring, had called for the governor’s resignation after the original story broke. A few days later, however, Herring was doing his own mea culpa. Turns out he had dressed in blackface, too.

His story claims he was a huge rap fan in 1980 as a freshman at the University of Virginia. It seems unlikely Herring was one of the first people outside of New York City in 1980 to not only love rap to the point that he’d want to dress as Kurtis Blow, but loved it very quickly considering Blow’s debut record didn’t come out until September 29, 1980. Possible, but unlikely.

After calling for Northam’s head, Herring has since buried his once he admitted it had (at least) once been painted black. You can’t make this stuff up.

How do you engage in a serious conversation about race with Democrats knowing two of their highest elected officials committed obvious acts of racism? Sure, national Democrats tweeted their disgust and calls for resignations, then they pretty much moved on. You can’t sincerely believe someone should resign based on principle one day and never mention it again. It’s not much of a principle if you do.

All of this before we even got to the fact that the Lt. Governor, a Democrat named Justin Fairfax, has been accused of rape by two women.

Just one state and the top three Democrats have either admitted to racist acts or been accused of rape. Where’s the drumbeat to “believe all women” or the continued calls for resignation?

They don’t exist because, should all three be held to the very standards Democrats set for everyone else, the Speaker of the House of Delegates would ascend to the governor’s office, and that man happens to be a Republican. Pious principles have limits, it seems, and they end when it could cost the party power.

There was barely an American during the Obama administration who wasn’t called some form of bigot – racist, sexist, homophobe, Islamophobe, phobe-i-phobe – you name it, and if Democrats saw an inch to be gained by accusing someone of it, they were accused of it. Now those chickens are coming home to roost and Democrats have boarded up the coop. The American people should take notice. Because, while they’ll let their own off the hook, they will never, ever do anything close to the same for you.

Derek Hunter is a columnist at Townhall, podcast host, and author of “Outrage, INC.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood.” To combat how the political left manipulates unsuspecting Americans to the point that they’d believe their lies and act on them, you have to understand how liberals weaponized important institutions against the American people.And don’t forget to subscribe to his daily podcast, it’s informative, funny and it’s free!