How much is too much when it comes to the increasingly radical direction of the Democratic Party? At what point do the voters, now surveying a political environment no longer dominated by the presence of the ever-demonized Donald Trump, decide that enough is enough? Where do Democrats finally reach the wrong side of the so-called Overton Window of acceptable positions and policies?
Well, the Democrats’ association with Marxist-tinged Black Lives Matter, their efforts to weaken the police, and their refusal to condemn violent mobs throughout the harrowing summer of 2020 were evidently not sufficiently off putting to deny Joe Biden the White House and his party control of the Senate. Their talk of offering taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegals, plans to alter the fundamental structure of the U.S. Senate by eliminating the filibuster, adding states, and packing the courts was apparently not as frightening to voters as one might well expect. Even the visible neurological decline, or evident dementia, of the man nominated for the presidency – affirmed by the belief of a majority of Americans in a Gallup poll weeks before the election – was not enough to prevent tens of millions of voters from pulling the lever for the Democratic ticket.
Yes, the Democrats managed to seize control of Washington despite advocating for policies thought to be entirely outside the comfort zone of rank-and-file Americans. But perhaps interpreting the election as evidence that the country has suddenly moved well left of its historically centrist course, they allowed, encouraged even, the insidious deployment of critical race theory (CRT) into school curricula across the nation – right after they had done everything to keep schools closed. This explosively divisive thesis is designed specifically to deny the nobility of the American founding and replace it with a ruinous sketch of a nation founded for the specific purpose of furthering slavery. It is what many have labeled a full-on blood libel.
Is CRT that bridge too far, the one that finally hits too close to home, especially with those newly woke white suburban women who famously went for Biden in droves? Is the proximity of this new strain of thought to the left’s widely reviled school closure policies enough to drive the nation back in a conservative direction? These same women who abandoned Trump, with children who were forced to stay home and then returned to freshly CRT-infected schools, are now experiencing the consequences of their blind support for a party offering nothing more than “not Donald Trump.” And with each passing day, CRT becomes a tightening yoke around the Democrats’ neck.
As the left’s chickens come home to roost, recall fever is sweeping the land. California Governor Gavin Newsom has been successfully targeted for recall, with his fate to be determined by voters on September 14. But that is merely the tip of the iceberg, toward which the national education establishment is inexorably headed. To date, at least 51 local recall efforts have been launched, targeting at least 130 elected members of school boards. That is already double the annual norm (23 recalls targeting 52 members is the average over the last 15 years) – with more than five months left in the year. Even in the nation’s most outwardly leftist city, three members of the San Francisco school board have been subjected to a recall campaign. That particular initiative is based on both the school shutdown and, in another CRT-like tentacle of the woke agenda, the board expending an inordinate amount of time during the pandemic renaming some 44 buildings whose names apparently emitted an odor of white supremacy. In fact, 20 separate school board recall efforts are underway across California, more than in the entire nation in 2020.
(Jessica Christian/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Despite the record-setting pace of recall initiatives, history has demonstrated that most of them are unlikely to succeed. Since 2006, less than a third of such efforts reached the ballot – and less than one-in-five targeted school board members were removed from office. But it seems that, while many of those subject to recall this year will survive, the significance of this growing movement is to be found more in the efforts than in the outcomes. And the pushback is reflected well beyond school boards. In one of the few noteworthy races in this post-presidential election year, Virginia’s GOP gubernatorial candidate, Glenn Youngkin, is running hard on the CRT issue, and you can bet his fellow Republicans will follow suit in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections. We are also likely to see a well-financed campaign against the all-powerful National Education Association, which has promoted CRT in some 14,000 school districts across the nation.
The conclusion is becoming increasingly inescapable. The left can, for now, run from CRT – and their controversial school closure policies – but they can’t hide.
One can almost hear the mind of the everyday voter: You come after Donald Trump with guns blazing, fine – that’s politics. You encourage nationwide protests centered around racial injustice – understandable after the horror of George Floyd’s death. You seize unprecedented power over our lives in the face of a pandemic – acceptable given the circumstances. But when you come after my country – and my kids – that is when you have crossed the line.
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