This comes after texts from former Virginia State Delegate and Democratic candidate for Attorney General, Jay Jones, leaked. The texts contain violent rhetoric directed against the former GOP Virginia House Speaker, Todd Gilbert.
Jones, corresponding with a former colleague in the Virginia House, wrote: “put [Speaker] Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.” The colleague he was texting was uncomfortable with the violent rhetoric Jones was espousing, pleading for him to stop.
He didn’t.
Jones carried on, wishing death on the children of Speaker Gilbert. The idea that an educated, former elected official would espouse such violent rhetoric is shocking. What in his moral lexicon allows him to spew such rhetoric? Jones exposes his logic when he says: “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
This deeply rooted philosophy displays why this violent rhetoric, like what we have seen from Jones and from Lucy Martinez, has become so familiar.
Jones has since apologized to the people of Virginia and Former Speaker Gilbert for his remarks. However, it is of great importance to note that this is not some outburst of rage against political opponents; it is a part of his political philosophy. One that I highly doubt has changed since those texts were sent.
Jones believes, like many on the left, that people only move on policy when it personally affects them. Therefore, it is not far off for someone who cares deeply about policy to believe that anything to get someone to move their way on policy would be acceptable. It is obvious that this rhetoric would lead to violent ends. After all, when you make policy that personal, you place policy above civility or respect. The only end would be a policy win.
Jay Jones is hardly the only one in the Democratic Party who believes in this philosophy. Recently, democrats have adopted emotion and pain as one of their planks during the Trump Administration. For example, after the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, Democrats adopted the message that “pain is coming” for Americans due to medicaid cuts. In fact, Democrats stressed that these cuts would disproportionately affect red states, because then maybe affected Republicans might move on healthcare policy.
The left-wing philosophy of personalizing policy to win is as common as any other policy position. Therein lies the reason why Democrats continue to back Jay Jones for Attorney General. In fact, the media got their titling wrong. Democrats don’t continue to back Jay Jones despite his violent rhetoric; they back him because they share his political philosophy of emotionally personalized politics.
Violent rhetoric is far from rare on the left wing. Over the summer, North Carolina Representative Julie Von Haefen posted a video in support of another anti-Trump “No Kings” protest. In this video, there is a display that contains the severed head of President Trump. Haefen, like Jones, apologized but did not face any concrete accountability. Compare this to members of a Young Republican group chat who did not engage in personally violent rhetoric the likes of which Jones and Von Haefen espoused. Unlike Jones and Von Haefen, these Republicans were fired from their jobs, and a Vermont legislator resigned because of it.
The Vermont legislator was forced out, not by democrats, but by leaders in his own party. There is no such reciprocation on the left; there were no serious national calls for Jones to drop out or for Von Haefen to resign. Because if they did call for accountability, they would be reneging on their own deep-seated obsession with winning on policy that has stripped Jones and many of his democratic colleagues of civility and respect for their fellow countrymen.
