If not for double standards, Democrat party leaders wouldn’t have any.

It was OK in the first decade of this millennium that Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) was considered the “conscience of the Senate” by his Demo colleagues, even though he had been an “exalted cyclops” in the Ku Klux Klan.

Last year it was OK that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) was vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee at the same time he was an advocate for fellow Muslim racist Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam black-supremacist haters calling for an “ethnostate.”

Now enter Gov. Ralph “Coonman” Northam (yes, that was his college nickname). Just days after earning infamy for his comments in support of infanticide, a photo was “discovered” of Northam from his medical yearbook profile page, featuring two people – one in black face and the other in a KKK robe. Northam admitted he was in the photo but refused to acknowledge which of the racist characters was him — apparently trying to decide which one would be “less racist.”

On Friday, Northam launched an apology tour: “I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now. … I understand how this decision shakes Virginians’ faith in that commitment.” But he refused to resign.

Really? This is not a teenager’s high-school yearbook from 35 years ago, with a notation about “passing gas,” for which then-SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh was relentlessly skewered by Democrats.

This is an adult’s medical-school yearbook. It is astounding that the mainstream media did not uncover this photo during his 2017 campaign for governor — when he was labeling his Republican opponent, Ed Gillespie, “racist.” Recall Northam’s campaign ad depicting four minority kids – two Hispanic boys, an African American boy and a Muslim girl wearing a headscarf – being chased by a man in a pickup truck with a Gillespie sticker on the back.

It would be interesting to know which media “journalists” suppressed knowledge of the photo, and I have inquired with the editorial board of The Washington Post, but I don’t expect an answer. But this I do know: Had that photo emerged during the campaign, Ed Gillespie would be governor of Virginia. (Coincidentally, last week, a black-face photo of then-Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel ® was discovered, and he resigned within hours of that discovery.)

But what we do know… Virginia’s 2017 statewide elections were the first after Donald Trump’s 2016 election, and WaPo had the scandalous details about sexual assault allegations against Northam’s Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, but chose not to make those charges public. Clearly no Leftmedia outlet wanted to derail the first “blue wave” rebuttal to Trump’s election, amid the “#MeToo” furry. There is now a second charge of sexual assault against Fairfax, and astoundingly, even the third ranking Democrat in Virginia, Attorney General Mark Herring, is now in trouble for a blackface photo.)

For the record, given the fact that a grossly disproportionate number of aborted babies are black, and Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger was an advocate of racially selective eugenics to contain less desirable ethnic groups like black people, the irony of Northam’s infanticide comments and now this racist photo is thick.

In what alternate universe does a major political party pressure its sitting governor to resign because he appeared in a 35-year-old racist photo but not because of his position (as a pediatrics specialist) advocating infanticide legislation? Fortunately, that bill failed to pass. Of course, the Virginia Democrat Party is controlled — as is the state — by suburban government bureaucrats who reside in northern Virginia and have no roots in the state.

Unbelievably, a day after declaring he was in the photo, Northam claimed he was not in the photo: “In the hours since I made my statement yesterday, I reflected with my … classmates from the time and affirmed my conclusion that I am not the person in that photo.”

He now recalls once darkening his face with shoe polish to portray Michael Jackson in a dance contest. “You remember these things,” he insisted, after admitting he didn’t. This pivot would be laughable if not so pathetic – even The Washington Post declared his explanation “strains credulity. The photo still appeared in his yearbook and he is likely under that hood or he NEVER would have admitted he was in the photo. The Jackson blackface story was concocted so Northam could "get out from under the hood.” (Ironically, for the last two decades of his life, Michael Jackson strived to appear in whiteface.) Now that Northam has “reflected” with his political tribe and his classmates, two of them may come forward and claim they were in the photo.

So will Northam resign? I hope not!

The reason Democrats may insist he resign, regardless, is that if he stays in office, the photo undermines their “racist Republicans” mantra, especially on issues like Trump’s plan for what they consider an “immoral” and “racist” southern-border barrier.

For now, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, a black gubernatorial hopeful who was stewarded by Al Gore and John Kerry is in the wings. He is a DC native who moved to Virginia to support Demo Sen. Mark Warner. Fairfax will be a far more formidable leftist Democrat governor than Northam.

(Footnote: Because the Northam story was about racism, CNN “accidentally” identified him as a Republican in its initial coverage.)