Michael Bloomberg was not only the mayor of New York City; he was a Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 election. He recently wrote an intense op-ed that gave his Democratic Party a grave warning. He said that they were “headed for a wipeout” in the midterm elections coming this November.
Bloomberg focused on the recent recall of three school board members in San Francisco, which the former mayor called “America’s most liberal city.” He declared that the whole party needed an “immediate course correction.” Bloomberg directed Democrats to focus on quality education over political correctness and getting tangled up in culture wars.
“The political earthquake that just occurred in San Francisco should be a dire warning to the national Democratic Party because the same fault line stretches across the country and the tremors are only increasing,” Bloomberg wrote in his op-ed.
He went on to explain that the school board members did not show any kind of urgency to reopen their schools even when it became clear that to open them was safe. They did not acknowledge that students who were only doing remote classes were getting farther and farther behind. Private schools were opening all around them, but the public schools remained tightly closed.
Bloomberg believes that there is nothing that has increased the social achievement gaps more than poorly planned remote instruction for students. He said that parents are very aware of this and that elected officials needed to show that they know it, too.
He did not mince words saying that the school board members were more concerned with political correctness than educating their children. He wrote that when they should have been reopening their schools, they focused on just renaming them. They took away names of beloved American figures like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. It took a public outcry before they realized that they needed to backtrack.
This all took place while parents were trying to just stay afloat in their homes with their children.
Bloomberg wasn’t alone in his criticism. The Democratic mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, joined in the rebuke of the school board members. She focused on the fact that board members voted to eliminate merit-based admissions at one of the city’s top-performing schools.
“Students had long been admitted based on their grades and tests until the board moved to a lottery system. Make no mistake: Lowering standards in the name of fairness only exacerbates injustice and inequality,” Breed said.
Bloomberg suggested that closing the gaps in achievement should be accomplished by creating more high-quality schools, not undermining the ones that already exist.
Bloomberg lowered the bomb when he said that his Democratic Party must acknowledge that schools were closed for too long and that eliminating standards is the wrong way to get to equity. If the party doesn’t get this, they will lose their “razor-thin” majorities in both the House and the Senate.
The former NYC mayor warned that swing voters will be deciding the 2022 midterm elections and the polls are moving away from the Democrats. The parents in San Francisco overwhelmingly approved that the board president and several members be recalled. It was clear that they chose progressive politics over the best interest of the children during the pandemic.
Donny Deutsch, a panelist on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” said that Democrats needed to move away from “super-wokeness.” He said that what we saw in San Francisco is telling about what is happening elsewhere. Joe Scarborough, the host of the show, agreed that woke politics were hurting Democratic candidates.
There is a new Democratic Party poll that has shown that the voters believe the party is too focused on culture wars, renaming schools, and defunding the police.
Bloomberg wants the earthquake that shook San Francisco to shake the whole party. If not, the voters will do it in November.
