Jeremy Stangroom

If it's true he can't effectively govern a diverse state after this - it is at least partly because of the overblown reaction. Plus you've got to be careful with "nobody who matters in any meaningful way" talk. Mobs have power even if they're full of people who "don't matter".

Where do you see an overblown reaction? All I see from Northam’s fellow Democrats are statements like “his service has been good but how can a governor regain trust after this” which is obviously true.

A lot of Republican reactions seem disingenuous (as the same people defend Trump, Steve King etc and Northam’s opponent ran a Confederacy-praising campaign), but is a pretty standard way for opposition to take jabs at a sitting governor.

Remember who he is. This is not an author being boycotted or an electrician being fired. It’s an elected official at the highest level. He’s only there because the people elected him, and many would not have done so had they had this info.

And the question of "who he is" - well, in my view he certainly isn't the person he was when he was 18. Would you want to be held responsible now for your behavior as an 18 year old? I would consider it a travesty of justice if I were held accountable from my teenage behavior.

Back then, if social media had been around, I would absolutely have been part of dogpiling mobs. I don't think I should be held accountable for that now. My 18 year old self is gone. (Similarly, I shouldn't get any credit now for the good things I did then.)

Have you considered the fact that both you and @Metamagician are commenting on an event in a country in which you don’t live? That your understanding of the context may be crucially lacking because of that? Also, he wasn’t 18 when he finished medical school. He was 25.

That's not an argument. It's a rhetorical move. Also, there's plenty of reason to suppose that living in a country does not give people a good appreciation of these sorts of issues. See, for example, 'The nature of belief systems in mass publics' by Converse (an early classic).