By Jim Geraghty
Wednesday, February 09, 2022
Very, very rarely do you see the leadership of a major
state political party so badly miscalculate where it stands, both in overall
public opinion and amongst its own rank-and-file legislators. Three weeks ago,
Virginia Democratic Party chair Susan Swecker declared that, “Masks
are essential to keeping students safe and schools open, but Glenn [Youngkin]
would rather use our children as political cover to appease the extreme,
far-right fringes of his own party.”
Got that? Wanting parents to decide whether or not their
kids wear masks to school is a position of the “extreme, far-right fringes.” So
Virginia Democrats prepared themselves for an epic showdown over masking in
schools.
And then they lost, badly. On Tuesday, almost half the Democrats in the Virginia State Senate said,
“Nah, we’re fine with having parents decide”:
The Virginia Senate on Tuesday
overwhelmingly approved a bill that would prevent local school boards from
levying mask mandates and from punishing students whose parents opt to send
their child to school without a mask.
Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax City,
filed the provision Tuesday as an amendment to a bill about in-person learning
introduced by Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico. Democrats have 21 votes in the
Senate to Republicans’ 19. Ten Democrats voted for the amendment, nine voted
against it, and two abstained.
The bill is expected to clear the
GOP-controlled House.
Youngkin hailed the Senate vote as
a “victory for parents and children.” His administration plans to fast-track
the bill to becoming law once it reaches his desk, meaning that it could be the
law in less than two weeks.
The recent decisions of Connecticut governor Ned Lamont,
Delaware governor John Carney, and New Jersey governor Phil Murphy further
undermined Virginia Democrats’ argument that a desire to see masks become
optional in schools was some sort of fringe, far-right position. The remaining
pro-mask Democrats were left flailing, insisting that this was an interruption
of local control of schools — never mind that the previous mask mandate was
also an interruption of local control of schools! And some Democrats contended
that it was simply a matter of timing:
House Minority Leader Eileen
Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, also criticized efforts by Youngkin to remove the power
over mask mandates from localities. She also noted that while other
Democrat-led states are doing away with statewide mask mandates, their
decisions come as the omicron variant recedes. She notes Youngkin’s executive
order on masks came while cases were still surging.
Eh, not quite. Youngkin’s executive order was issued on January 15th and
was scheduled to go into effect January 24. In the state of Virginia, cases peaked around the 15. The seven-day daily average of
new-cases is now about a third of what it was in mid January; those Omicron
curves go up really fast, and then they come down really fast.
How did Virginia Democratic Party leaders so
spectacularly misjudge the views of their own Senate caucus? In part, blame the “read the room” lady who yelled at Youngkin in that
supermarket in Alexandria. The northern Virginia mandatory-masking
enthusiasts are utterly convinced that they’re a supermajority — or at least
they were convinced up until yesterday afternoon. A recent letter to the editor in the Washington Post summarized
the view succinctly: “Sadly, not all parents are good parents. People move
to Virginia because our schools are among the finest in the nation. We trust
our teachers to always have our children’s welfare at hearts,” this Fairfax
resident wrote, after the public schools remained closed for a bit more than a
year. “The decent people of Virginia did not elect Mr. Youngkin so that he
could amuse himself as he tears down all that is good about our state. What
will it take to stop his rampage?”
Got that? Northern Virginia progressives see allowing
parents to decide whether or not their kids wear masks as tearing “down all
that is good about our state”!
The Virginia Democratic Party picked their hill to die on
. . . and then they died on it. Unfortunately, they didn’t listen
to other northern Virginia voice like the one who wrote this newsletter, back
on January 25: “Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin is going to win his fight with
seven local school boards on whether masks should be optional. The only
questions are when and how.”
Oh, and here was the headline over on MSNBC on Monday: “Glenn Youngkin’s rough start in Virginia gets a little rougher.”
Everybody Loves Local Control When They Agree with the
Locals
Yesterday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki also retreated to
the argument of “local control,” but worded her answer in a way that made it
sound as if states were banning students from wearing masks, which is not what
any of them are doing:
Q: Do you believe then that the Democratic-led states who
are breaking with the CDC on this guidance, that they’re not — that they’re
throwing science away and that the CDC is — has access to different science
somehow?
PSAKI: We don’t look at it through that prism. These
states, I think it’s important to note, they still allow for decisions to be
made by local school districts.
Where we come up with concern — where we have great
concern is if a kid or a parent chooses to wear a mask or a school district
decides they should keep mask guidance in place and there are leaders who are
preventing them from doing that. That is the [case] in some other states.
What’s changed to trigger this massive shift among
Virginia state senators and northeastern Democratic governors? As I mentioned
on yesterday’s Three Martini Lunch podcast, two important
things came down: first, the rate of new cases declined, and second, Stacey
Abrams sat on that elementary-school auditorium floor without a mask while
surrounded by masked young children. Even if Abrams was oblivious to the
absurdity she was displaying, other Democrats saw that photo and felt the need
to put as much distance between themselves and the
masks-for-thee-but-not-for-me philosophy.
It only took five days for Abrams to realize that her “It
is shameful that our opponents are using a Black History Month reading event
for Georgia children as the impetus for a false political attack” spin was
untenable.
“And then the excitement after I finished because it was
so much fun working with those kids, I took a picture and that was a
mistake,” she told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “Protocols matter and
protecting our kids is the most important thing and anything that can be
perceived as undermining that is a mistake and I apologize.”
An apology on the fifth day, after four days of insisting
that she did nothing wrong and that her critics were in fact wrong, does much
less to control the damage than an apology on the first or second day would
have.
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