“You don’t want to mess with moms who are rising up,” Sarah Palin declared in 2010. “If you thought pit bulls were tough, you don’t want to mess with mama grizzlies.”
Maybe her warning was just a dozen years too early? If this wasn’t clear after Glenn Youngkin became the first Republican to win statewide election in Virginia since 2009, this week’s recall of three progressive school board members in San Francisco makes one thing clear: A parents’ revolt is currently sweeping the nation.
What woke the mama (and papa) grizzlies from hibernation in the City by the Bay? Rather than prioritizing school reopenings (which, ironically, would have helped the most vulnerable communities), San Francisco’s Board of Education wasted time voting to rename a third of their schools, including those named for oppressors like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. To make matters worse, the reasoning they employed to make some of these decisions was historically inaccurate.
ADVERTISEMENT
Meanwhile, Asian Americans were angered when the district’s most prestigious high school, Lowell High School, was moved from a merit-based admissions system to a lottery. To complicate matters, tweets surfaced from the board’s vice president which (as described by The New York Times) asserted that “Asian Americans were like slaves who benefited from working inside a slave owner’s house.” She also accused them of using “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’”
Progressives amazingly found a way to unite Tiger Moms, Soccer Moms, and Mama Grizzlies (and dads) into an identity politics coalition where parenthood trumps ideology.
Conservatives could never have pulled this off on their own. So how did this begin? With closings.
“Democrats always have underestimated how many Democrats were mad at the school closures,” Rory Cooper, a Republican strategist living in Virginia, told Politico last year. “In my very blue neighborhood,” Cooper continued, “there were first-time Republican voters this cycle, which you would normally think is nuts a year out of Trump. But they were voting in their self-interest, which is what voters typically do, and their self-interest includes their kids.”
The same thing happened in San Francisco—a city known for its hippies, hipsters, and vagrants—where the Board of Education’s “woke” politics, coupled with closures and sickouts, caused even the most liberal mommies to let loose a roar this week. Yes, conservative money poured in to support the movement; but keep in mind that less than 7 percent of San Francisco voters are registered as Republicans.
What is more, there are literally more dogs than children in San Francisco, but parents have skin in the game. A lot of otherwise progressive parents want their kids to have a normal childhood again, and learning loss, emotional issues that have been brought on by isolation, and educational-related issues are top of mind for them.
In big cities around the nation, the story has been the same: Egregious masking requirements (such as forcing kids to wear them on the playground during recess), strict protocols, and endless school closures (or policies that were tantamount to closures) highlighted the fact that progressive politicians and teachers’ unions were more interested in advancing their personal or political interests than in taking care of our children. And when it comes to input from parents, they made it clear they weren’t all that interested.
Remember, for all the chatter about Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender identity politics, it was Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s gaffe (“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach”), that really did him in.
This sort of out-of-touch arrogance is still on full display. Take Los Angeles, for example.
Last weekend, the city welcomed tens of thousands of unmasked Super Bowl fans, including L.A.’s mayor. But the Los Angeles Unified School District is still imposing an outdoor mask mandate for school kids. Democrats do not seem to be learning their lesson about hypocrisy, and thus I can only surmise electoral defeats will continue piling up.
Since the arrival of COVID-19, education issues have become, themselves, culture war issues that are red-pilling liberal parents. When combined with issues like CRT, you get a politically potent mix that motivates a wide spectrum of voters. According to a recent Politico report, Democrats’ own research has shown “that some battleground voters think the party is ‘preachy,’ ‘judgmental’ and ‘focused on culture wars.’” Democrats were already poised for a bad midterm, but we may instead see a red wave that looks more like a tsunami.
Are we witnessing the birth of a powerful new coalition, or will the parents' revolt recede as the strictest COVID protocols give way to ones that take into account a more reasonable risk-benefit analysis? That’s the big question.
The parents’ revolt dovetails with other existing trends: progressive elites are out of touch with their voters, and the working-class Americans (in some cases, members of minority groups) who were formerly allied with Democrats are being pushed to the right.
I have voiced reservations about similar populist movements, most recently regarding the Canadian truckers blocking roads and bridges in opposition to vaccine mandates. While this parental revolt has spawned some excesses and overreaches, as a dad I can get behind this kind of populist movement.
Loving parents are taking responsibility for their children’s education by getting involved in the community.
In San Francisco and Virginia, the most effective blows were struck at the ballot box. This is America. This is citizenship. This is democracy.
Democrats would be wise to pay attention. We are parents, hear us roar!
