Trouble In VA Dem Paradise! Ben Tribbett: “I’m Appalled at Virginia Democratic Party Leadership”

I’m just appalled at the party leadership on this issue. They have absolutely minimized the seriousness of what are not just rape allegations, but violent rape allegations from two very credible women. I just, John, it’s really hard for me as a Democrat to see this and be able to justify to people why they would be Democrats. I mean I understand why people would vote Democratic and support Democratic candidates because they’re against other candidates that they agree with more often, but in terms of being a Democrat, wow.

I mean it just is like you look at this and you’re like, the party leadership is protecting him and not supporting the victims of what is some accused very violent crimes. I can’t tell you how disappointing that is.

“That position doesn’t represent me, it doesn’t represent a lot of people out there. So that having been said, there are a couple of delegates that I saw that have spoken out, already breaking with the Democratic Caucus position on this, and I saw Delegate [Patrick] Hope [D-NOVA] spoke out on it yesterday afternoon in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

I hope others will speak out. The Republicans are offering what is a very reasonable offer of a bipartisan investigation in the House. The women who are involved said they prefer not to go to the DA’s for investigation in the places where the crimes occurred. That was how they started this, only as a last resort…”

BEN: ON VA DEM PARTY LEADERSHIP

“I think that when we talk about in this context, it’s the House Democratic Caucus, it’s what the leadership of the House Caucus is the one that’s leading the charge on this. So whether that be [House Minority Leader] Eileen Filler-Corn, [Del.] Rip Sullivan, [Del.] Alfonso Lopez, [Del.] David Toscano — who still takes on a very large leadership role– or [Del.] Charniele Herring, all of them that would have been involved in crafting a statement like what went out last night. I’m absolutely appalled.

BEN: VA DEMS TAKE A HIT IN SPECIAL
 
Now to the special election last night, I don’t think what Eileen Filler-Corn wants to do politically is exactly a big winner on any electoral level. You can obviously see in the special election results last night, the Democratic candidate badly underperformed.

Now it’s hard to tell and differentiate with three statewide scandals going on, the complete ineptitude of the House Democratic Caucus, and a Democratic candidate who has their own individual scandals going on within that district. He had made some statements about the Israel Palestine conflict that were pretty nasty that he had to apologize for. It’s hard to tell which of those things is what led to that under performance. So it’s hard to put down your finger on specific analysis there…”

“…when you centralize it to 2015, you see major losses if this was to be matched in November. Of course these are scenarios, I’m not predicting this….”

THE DISASTER CALLED VA DEMS

“I’m going to say it’s been a disaster. I think the reason it’s a disaster is the choice that she’s [Eileen Filler-Corn] made, which is obvious to anyone who’s watching, that Eileen has decided that she is just a filter for others and not going to show leadership on her own.

So what I see happening is, is that she’s talking to members of the Caucus and trying to create consensus and leading around that consensus.

That’s not leadership. If Speaker [Kirk] Cox used that style of leadership in the Republican Caucus, we wouldn’t have Medicaid expansion, because a majority of the Republican Caucus never supported it. Sometimes you have to get out and actually lead ahead of your party and have people follow you.

“That’s where Eileen has been a complete and abject failure so far, is that she has been completely unwilling to show any leadership and have people follow her. She just wants to be the person who polls the Caucus and takes the Caucus position. In a time like this, I don’t think you could have a worse leadership style than what she’s choosing to do….”

BEN: “SICK AND TIRED OF IDENTITY POLITICS”
                
“I’m sick and tired of listening to Democrats say all of this identity politics of, ‘Well it looks bad if this happens in this order after what happened with Ralph.’  No. It looks bad if we equate idiotic high school and college behavior, which would be the Northam and Herring situations and what they did was bad, but if we’re going to equate their stupid behavior and being in insensitive pictures with a crime, the party completely lost it’s way. If you can’t differentiate doing something wrong, and those pictures are very wrong, but doing something wrong is not a crime and if we can’t differentiate that then shame on us. Shame on everybody because it’s an absolute disgrace that we struggle to differentiate that.

“So my view on it is that the House Caucus position is to undermine these women. They are the only, the fact that the Republican Caucus is willing to move forward and that the House Democratic Caucus is now the one roadblock to these women having the hearing they’ve asked for is appalling, it’s disgusting, it completely undermines the Democratic message. It exposes us as really complete frauds in terms of what we’ve told the public that we stand for in believing women. It is a debacle and I just think that everybody should be very embarrassed at the entire spectacle.”

I highly recommend listening to the full interview.

Listen to the full interview from The John Fredericks Show here.