To
paraphrase a line from the movie, A
Few Good Men:
the Democrats can’t seem to handle power and are fumbling and
bumbling their way to political oblivion with their naïve
decision-making and strategizing in the face of a Republican
onslaught to overthrow democracy that is sweeping the nation.
Their
political hubris far exceeds their narrow margins in the U.S. House
and Senate, and a Presidency with an approval rating that has been
underwater during the past year, polling in the low forties. The
Democrats’ loss of the gubernatorial election in Virginia on
November 2, 2021 that Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020 and nearly
losing the governorship in New Jersey that Biden won by 16 points on
the same date seemingly has no impact on their political maneuvering.
Since
that time, there has been virtually no response to the Republicans’
continuing assault on America’s democratic institutions,
especially K-12 public education. Instead, they are upping the ante
and expanding the range of their attacks. Since successfully
vilifying Virginia’s and other public schools across the nation
in 2021 for allegedly teaching critical race theory (which is loosely
defined as any discussion of race in the classroom), Republicans are
on a tear.
They
are also proposing bans on books that they deem too graphic, racially
focused, or the ones they just don’t like. More recently,
Republicans are targeting school boards that they view as too
supportive of the aforementioned initiatives. And the Democrats are
standing idly by while their strongest allies are being eviscerated.
The
Corporate Cartel for privatization of public education is profiting
from the pandemic in 2022 as it did from the ravages wrought by
Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Then, as now, it increased the public
funding of corporate charter schools, voucher schools, and religious
schools.
As
Biden’s American
Rescue Act (ARA) was
winding its way through Congress in 2021, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY),
the Democratic Majority Leader, with the help of Randi Weingarten,
president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s
second largest teacher’s union, quietly inserted $2.5 billion
into the ARA that went to the Corporate Cartel that, in effect,
subverts public education.
Possibly
the most disturbing element of the Republican confrontation with
Democrats is the first ever attempt to recall three members of the
San Francisco school board (all Democrats), in the upcoming February
2022 election, over new rules that increased Black and Latinx
admissions to merit-based programs which disadvantaged Whites and
Asians as well as COVID-related school closings. Biden carried the
city with 86 percent of the vote in 2020.
The
coalition that Republicans have formed with San Francisco’s
disgruntled Asian citizens is an incursion into the Democrats’
base of ethnic minority voters (Black, Latinx, and Asian American)
who were central to Biden’s presidential victory. This is part
of a political playbook that was revealed in 2020 in Republican
states that Trump carried - Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama,
and others.
Although
small, to date, there are trends of increased support for Republican
policies among African American males and Asian and Latinx citizens
from socialist and/or autocratic countries. A capture of even a
sliver of these voters in tight elections could push Republican
candidates over the top.
But
yet Democrats have developed no observable strategies to counteract
these Republican infiltrations that are weakening their base and
remain fixated on their internal squabbles that are not bearing
fruit.
And
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) who they remain convinced that they can make
vote their way has sidelined the Build Back Better (BBB) legislation.
House
Progressive Caucus Chair, Pramila Jayapal, has continued speaking for
the Democratic base without consulting it on its political
preferences while ignoring those leaders of the Democratic Party who
do. For example, Eric Adams, newly inaugurated mayor of New York
City, ran on a platform of public safety (crime reduction), improving
public education, adjusting the business climate to include the needs
of mom-and-pop stores and big corporations, getting families
employed, and increasing access to city services.
This
approach allowed him to defeat 12 candidates of diverse backgrounds
who could not address the concerns of one of America’s most
racially, ethnically, and economically diverse cities in a
contentious Democratic primary. He defeated several Progressive
candidates endorsed by Congressional Progressives because he
consulted with the Democratic base.
Although
New York City has a significant representation of all the components
of the Democratic base - ethnic minorities, women, educators, the
young, the poor, and the working and middle-class - the Adams victory
has not impacted the way Congressional Democrats are doing their
political business now and going forward.
Public
education needs to be a major emphasis of the Democrats’
organizing for the 2022 midterms if they have any hopes of holding on
to power. If they do not address the increasingly contentious impacts
of COVID measures and in-person schooling that the Republicans are
exploiting to great effect, Democrats will proceed to an electoral
wipeout.
