In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.
Virginia voters’ rejection of Terry McAuliffe’s claim that parents should not “be telling schools what they should teach” is a reminder that taxpaying parents are not bystanders to their children’s education. Two plus two equals four is an objective fact—few outside of academe believe the equation to be a construct engineered by an oppressive patriarchy. At the end of the day, there is hell to pay if the family checkbook or Wall Street’s ledgers don’t add-up.
Right now, the Democrats are looking flat-footed and tone-deaf. Nationally, they have vowed to push back “aggressively” against Republican charges that progressive school systems have made critical race theory and white privilege cornerstones of the educational experience. Skepticism is warranted as the Democrats struggle with the competing demands of their upstairs-downstairs coalition, one that is also forced to worry about what AOC is thinking.
Despite rising crime, the Biden administration has attacked cash bail in the name of racial equity. Just remember, it was South Carolina’s James Clyburn, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, who lamented the left wing of his party making “defund the police” their battle-cry.
Meanwhile, Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is expected to offer a full-throated defense of race-based affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Harvard admissions case. In case anyone forgot, California’s voters resoundingly rejected that path at the same time they were saying “no” to a second Trump term.
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As ever, culture counts. These days, just over half of Americans (52 percent) believe the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left, but only 35 percent say the Republican Party has moved too far to the right. Right now, the Democrats need to wake up and smell the coffee: It’s burning.
