Democrats' House of Cards Is Missing One Card

Federal prosecutors unsealed an eight-count indictment Thursday against Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, a Democrat, alleging she led a marijuana distribution and money laundering operation. Lucas answered on X: "I grew up under Jim Crow. I've seen what happens when people in power try to silence those who stand up to them." Her statement invoked history. The indictment alleges conduct, including that she used her post as chair of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee to shield the operation.

The charges are allegations, and Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell said she is innocent until proven guilty. He's right. Lucas may beat the case, and she may even show the prosecution was political. That argument belongs in a courtroom, where evidence decides it, and a slogan can't stand in for the evidence.

I've watched this routine for years. A critic raises a fair question, and out comes the deck: the race card, the gender card, the fascist card. Every card gets played except one, and that one is accountability. Frank Underwood in House of Cards at least looked into the camera and told us what he was up to.

The tactic works because it ends the argument. Once a question gets labeled prejudice, nobody has to answer it. I've been deposed enough times as an expert witness to know that a claim is only as good as the evidence behind it. Real discrimination exists. That's exactly why the fakes do so much damage.

Consider Taral Patel, the Democrat candidate for Fort Bend County commissioner in Texas in 2024. He was accused of posting fake racist comments on his own pages, apparently to win sympathy. He was charged in September 2024, two months before he appeared on the ballot. In April 2025, he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of misrepresentation of identity by a candidate. A courtroom is where that kind of victimhood gets audited, and the auditors rarely work for the campaign.

Jussie Smollett got the same instant embrace. In 2019, then-Sen. Kamala Harris called his reported attack an "attempted modern-day lynching." Police then said he had staged it. Harris deserves credit for what came next. She said she was "sad, frustrated, and disappointed" and warned that false reports divert resources from serious investigations. Smollett was convicted in 2021 on five counts of disorderly conduct. The Illinois Supreme Court threw out that conviction in 2024 over a prosecutor's agreement, a ruling the special prosecutor said had "nothing to do with" Smollett's innocence.

Sometimes the evidence gets manufactured outright. In October 2021, a group in khakis and tiki torches posed outside a Glenn Youngkin rally in Virginia to evoke Charlottesville. The Lincoln Project admitted it staged the stunt. Staffers on Democrat Terry McAuliffe's campaign amplified the scene, one calling it "disgusting and disqualifying." 

Duke shows what a rush to accuse costs. In 2007 North Carolina's attorney general dropped every charge against three lacrosse players, citing a "tragic rush to accuse" by an overreaching district attorney. Cornell is the live version, and I'm not predicting its ending. A woman alleges in a lawsuit that seven fraternity members assaulted her. Hochul then handed the case to Attorney General Letitia James, who had posted that the woman's ordeal was "horrific and unacceptable." Two accused men now argue James prejudged them. No one has been charged. Both sides deserve a prosecutor who waits.

Then there's the case where the grievance was real and the first reaction still missed. Two federal juries found that Talonya Adams, a black policy adviser, was discriminated against when she was fired from the Arizona Senate in 2015, in retaliation for complaining that she was paid less than white male policy advisers. She won a $2.75 million verdict. Katie Hobbs was Senate minority leader at the time. Her campaign's first answer to the verdict pointed to a pay gap between Democrat and Republican staffers. Within weeks, Hobbs apologized, calling her response "shortsighted, unnecessarily defensive, and failed to meet the moment." The missing card can be found. It just took a verdict to find it.

Critics will say Republicans deflect too, and they're right. But a party that claims the moral high ground on discrimination should hold itself to a higher standard of proof when a claim falls apart, because every collapse costs it the benefit of the doubt it asks voters to extend.

The cost lands on real victims. Every staged attack makes the next true report a little harder to believe, a point Harris herself made in 2019. Marcus Aurelius put the rule plainly in his Meditations: "If it is not true, do not say it."

The fixes are dull, which is how you know they might work. Officials should wait for facts before they amplify an incident, and Harris's 2019 statement and Duke's collapse show the price of skipping that step. Prosecutors should enforce false-report laws the same way for every party and every cause. Parties should drop nominees and staffers who fabricate grievances instead of hoping voters forget by November. Newsrooms should label charges as allegations and run corrections as prominently as the original claim. And the rest of us should ask our own side the same question we ask theirs: what's the evidence? None of this requires a new law or a new agency. It requires the nerve to apply one standard to both teams.

Lucas will get her day in court, and the presumption of innocence applies to her as it would to anyone. Any youth coach knows the oldest rule on the sideline. You own the loss, then you study the film. A party that answers every question with a grievance card eventually has no credibility left to spend. The house of cards stands only until someone asks for the receipts.

Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.

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