Thread by @JRubinBlogger

So have Republicans been barking up the wrong tree? Are Democrats tearing their hair out about their party being too “woke” freaking out over nothing? The data certainly contradicts the conventional wisdom.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…

don’t confuse the genuine frustration among parents over school closures during the pandemic with the cultural wedge issues MAGA pols cook up. Democrats may have been tone-deaf as to the former, but it does not mean voters have bought into Republicans’ extreme ideas on schooling

Democrats in San Francisco infuriated parents by attempting to rename schools when they should have been figuring out how to reopen them. These are not parents seeking to ban books or bastardize history.

Democrats need to go on the offense. That means talking about the concerns of real voters — crime, missed schooling, inflation — and explaining that Republicans are embracing a radical, bizarre agenda that offers no practical solution

Democrats also need to embrace values that Americans hold dear — democracy, fairness, opportunity . Democrats have been the pro-family party, trying to help working parents. They need to be unabashed patriots (unlike Rs defending armed insurrectionists and rooting for Putin)

Democrats should move to recapture the education issue. They supported funding to reopen schools in the American Rescue Plan; Republicans uniformly opposed it. Democrats should skewer Republicans on their politicization of education