What week for politics—and it’s only Wednesday. I’ll cover impeachment, a budget held hostage by casino interests, and a new candidate for governor. But first, I need to tackle the important stuff. 

Up in Virginia, a Democrat running for the state house of delegates in a competitive district was having sex on camera with her husband. According to the Washington Post, which broke the story, candidate Susanna Gibson and her husband broadcast themselves on a website called Chatterbate and performed sex acts for tips. A Republican operative alerted the reporter to the recordings.

We live in such strange times. I guess something like this was inevitable since cameras and selfies are ubiquitous and all our kinks have been normalized instead of hidden. I don’t know what the impact on her campaign will be. Democrats rushed to her defense, saying she had done nothing wrong. Republicans, of course, were giddy with excitement, forgetting that they defended a presidential candidate who had sex with a porn star while his wife was home with his newborn son. By those rules, her behavior is not disqualifying and she’s the candidate of family values. With the election less than two months away, she’s got to stay in the race.  

Gibson probably hurt herself with her response. She expressed outrage, calling it “the worst of gutter politics” and claiming that her privacy had been violated. There was nothing private about it. She was broadcasting herself having sex on the internet. It can’t get much more public than that. As for gutter politics, those videos are certainly fair game. She should have known that there are no secrets in politics. 

Gibson has a lawyer talking for her, threatening to sue. That’s rarely a good look for a candidate. She should have had a simple response and she should have been ready before the story broke since, as I mentioned, there are no secrets in politics. She should have said simply, “At least I was married to the porn star I was banging. I just hope the Republicans who stumbled on our videos continue get plenty of self-satisfaction. Now, we have more pressing issues facing Virginia than what married people do in the bedroom.” And then she should have shut up.

Next up, former Supreme Court Justice Mike Morgan announced that he’s running for governor in the Democratic primary against Attorney General Josh Stein. His candidacy has been rumored for months, but he waited until he officially resigned from the court before making it official. I don’t know Judge Morgan well, but met him several times during the 2016 campaign. He’s certainly impressive and would probably make a fine governor. That said, I’m not sure of his rationale for running. 

Stein has been a solid attorney general and good on the issues. He’s stood up to polluters, fought for voting rights, been strong on consumer protection, and looked for solutions to the opioid crisis. He’s also seasoned. He won two elections when Democrats lost the top of the ticket. So far, he’s put together a strong campaign. He knows what it takes to win a statewide race and he has the team to do it. 

I suspect Morgan will find that running a statewide campaign at the top of the ticket is remarkably different than running a statewide campaign for Supreme Court. He’s got six months to build a an organization, garner the resources to fund it, and raise his name recognition high enough to compete with Stein when most of the donor class is already locked up. I suspect Morgan will try to consolidate the African American vote that will make up almost 40% of the March primary. However, he will need to peel off voters who already know Stein and are inclined to vote for him. That will take real money. With the threshold for a runoff at only 30%, I think Morgan has a difficult task. 

I don’t begrudge Morgan running. If he becomes the nominee, I will gladly support him. I also think a primary could help sharpen Stein’s campaign if he becomes the nominee. He’ll spend more time in the African American community and build relationships that could help him if he faces Mark Robinson in the general election. The primary provides a dry run for the general. For those who say it’s wasting resources, i.e. money, there’s going to be plenty of cash for the Democratic nominee of the most competitive gubernatorial race of the cycle. I just don’t see a realistic path to victory for Morgan at this point in the cycle. 

Finally, while it’s hard to predict a news cycle, Morgan probably should have waited to announce. Impeachment, casinos, and porn stars is stiff competition for an already distracted populace. I suspect his announcement will get lost in the noise.

Over in the legislature, we found out what’s taking the budget so long. Republicans can’t agree on casinos. Senate President Pro-tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore are fighting over the terms of casinos. Apparently, some House Republicans are in revolt. Moore says they don’t have enough votes to pass the budget with casinos in it. Berger says they already had an agreement and the House needs to honor it. A stand alone vote on casinos would almost certainly fail.

In the meantime, the rest of the state is suffering because of the stalemate. The legislature agreed to expand Medicaid, but insisted that it not happen until they passed the budget, leaving hundreds of thousands of mostly working North Carolinians without health care. State employees and teachers can’t get the raises promised to them. And state programs that need funding are struggling. It’s a bad look heading into an election year. 

As for the casinos, they don’t belong in the budget anyway. The process for ramming them through the legislature stinks. Berger and Moore are picking winners and losers and the winners are mostly deep-pocketed casino interests looking to take money from hard-working North Carolinians. I’m not necessarily opposed to casinos, but this process is rotten to the core.

The casinos could blow up in the face of Republicans. Some of the people most ardently opposed to casinos are also part of the GOP base. If they get mad and take a pass on voting for down-ballot candidates, Republicans could suffer in 2024. Politically, casinos might better be left alone until the long session in 2025. That’s really when something as major as changing long-standing laws should be addressed. While I feel for the folks who need Medicaid and their raises, I’m having a good time watching Republicans fight each other. 

Finally, Kevin McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. I’m almost giddy. I believe this one will backfire the way the one against Bill Clinton did in 1998. They don’t have the evidence and they don’t even have the votes within their caucus because too many GOP House members know that the investigation is bogus. They aren’t impeaching Biden for high crimes and misdemeanors. They’re impeaching him because Trump got impeached—twice. 

The public is going to see through the charade. The accusations against Biden are eight years old or older and took place when he was vice-president. In contrast, Democrats impeached Trump for stuff he was doing while he was president. Nobody disputed Trump did what he did—trying to blackmail the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden—they just say it didn’t deserve impeachment. It’s the same argument they make about all Trump’s crimes. They don’t deny he committed them; they just refuse to hold him accountable. Instead, they’ll investigate Biden ad nauseam, come up with nothing, and then try to impeach him. 

McCarthy, for his part, is just trying to hang onto power. There’s threat of another government shutdown in less than a month and he’s trying to hold his caucus together, paying lip service to his most extreme flank. He didn’t ask for a vote on the impeachment inquiry because he doesn’t have the votes. However, Trump’s own justice department said impeachment inquiries are invalid unless they are authorized by a vote of the House. Oops. 

Republicans are complaining that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t hold a vote when she announced the first Trump impeachment inquiry. However, they’re wrong. Pelosi called the vote on October 31, 2019. If McCarthy doesn’t call a vote soon, it’s all for the headlines, making them look even more like the Keystone Kops. 

I think the GOP has made a serious political mistake in opening the impeachment inquiry. I don’t think most people in the country believe Biden has done anything that rises to the level of impeachment and I know the Republicans don’t have the evidence to convince them otherwise. They’re offering Democrats the opportunity to offload all the country’s problems on the GOP. Democrats can easily define Republicans as focusing political gamesmanship instead of the problems facing American families. Instead of driving Biden’s approval down, they will probably drive their own approval ratings into the gutter. 

Well, that was a lot. Let’s see how the rest of the week goes.