4 Comments

Disagree. I'm a lifelong (age 66) Democrat who's pretty upset by the racism and trans-cult anti-science that gets taught in our public schools these days. (And please don't tell me that it isn't taught, I've seen the materials.) I would have voted Republican in Virginia. If not for this issue, I would have voted Democrat (as I always have, and did in the mayoral election that I could actually vote in).

Expand full comment
author

Thanks for weighing in, MarkS. I have been known to be wrong! I would certainly love to see good polling on the issue, to see how many Biden-Youngkin voters cite those issues specifically as the reason for their votes.

I guess I start from the gut feeling that if Democratic parents really are pissed off in a widespread way about these things, that it would filter up to the electeds and they wouldn't be ceding the issue to the GOP. Eric Adams won the Democratic nomination and the mayoralty in NYC by running foursquare against defunding the police. Why wouldn't the same sort of thing happen wrt the school curriculum, if it really is an issue that many Democrats are outraged about?

Meanwhile, in NJ my impression is the pandemic restrictions were the dominant story.

Expand full comment

Thanks for the reply! I think it will filter up eventually, and that savvy centrist dems will move in that direction for 2022. Whether that will be enough to prevent the Restoriation in 2024 is anyone's guess; my guess is no.

Expand full comment

I wish this were true: "The main mechanism for fighting the pandemic is getting more people vaccinated" . . . but it now appears the vaccinations do not actually immunize but are only intended to mitigate, lessen the symptoms of people who are infected after having been vaccinated, while most people who get Covid even without vaccination do not have severe symptoms--so how can anyone tell if it is working or not? And since even people who have been vaccinated can be infected by the virus and spread it, how exactly is the vaccine supposed to be working to fight the pandemic?

Expand full comment