The Democratic Party has been hugely successful in persuading people that it is the party of the little guy. Whereas Republicans focus rapaciously on money, it’s the Democrats who champion reform on behalf of those who suffer under the status quo.
It’s a con, and nothing could show it more clearly than the Democrats’ antics in opposing the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be education secretary. Those obstructive efforts finally failed Tuesday, when DeVos was confirmed in the Senate with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tiebreaking vote.
Opposing school choice and the educational freedoms proposed by DeVos shows that Democrats aren’t with the littlest guys in society — the boys and girls in K-12 schools.
Instead they’re with the teachers unions, which organize for Democrats and pay handsomely into Democratic coffers. (What was that about the GOP rapaciously focusing on money at the expense of the powerless?) The Democrats’ outsized effort against DeVos, with its preening and disingenuous speechifying, was an effort to stay as close to the teachers unions as possible.
After falling flat on their faces in the 2016 election, Democrats are desperate to motivate their base and take at least one scalp from among President Trump’s nominees. But they can thank their former leader, Harry Reid, D-Nev., for making this next to impossible by when he scrapped 60-vote threshold required for confirmations to the Cabinet.
Senate Democrats admitted that their 24-hour occupation of the Senate floor was an empty stunt, for, as Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. said, “It’s unlikely we’re going to get that 51st vote but we’re going to try until the very last minute.” (Murphy, by the way, went to a good public school in an expensive suburb of Hartford).
Within minutes of losing the vote, the Democratic National Committee sent out a fundraising pitch seeking donations of $10 which, it said, would help fight vulnerable Republican senators.
Some on the Left called the Senate vote a “big win for the resistance movement.” To which the only answer is, with wins like that, who needs losses?
Democrats say Trump picked DeVos to reward a mega-donor (a fanciful claim given that DeVos attacked Trump during the GOP primary and never truly got on board with him in the general election).
If Democrats were actually the party of the little guy, they wouldn’t resist a change agent who’s ready to shake up the failing educational status quo; 53 percent of the general public gives the nation’s schools as a whole a C grade, with an extra 22 percent giving a D or F grade.
Progress on the Nation’s Report Card in math and reading is stalled or declining, depending on the grade year and subject. No matter how you look at the numbers, students in African-American and Hispanic families, the core constituencies of the Democratic Party, lag far behind their white counterparts.
When looking at the schools in their communities, African-Americans are the most dissatisfied group of all, with 54 percent grading their schools as a C, D, or F compared to 45 percent of whites and 39 percent of Hispanics.
DeVos’ primary goal should be to expand educational freedom. Students and parents should feel fulfilled and satisfied with the education at their schools. What good is a “free” public education if you can’t ask for a refund from the government when you’re unhappy with the result?
It’s not up to the federal government to reach into local schools and make improvements. Only 10 cents of every government dollar spent on K-12 education comes from the federal government. It’s the responsibility of state and local school institutions to make improvements. Most importantly, it’s up to parents, so they need the flexibility to do that.
Today, Democrats and teachers unions can be glad the secretary of education has little power, and that the new secretary is keen to yield her power to states, communities and families regardless of their ideology.
If Democrats are truly appalled by the power given to DeVos, perhaps they’ll sign up to cosponsor H.R. 899, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. The bill is one sentence long. “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”
