2020 Democratic Presidential Contender Sounds Alarm: 'The Party Is Headed for a Wipeout in November'
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential run was short-lived before it ended in defeat. Now, he’s warning the entire Democratic Party may be headed towards the same fate in 2022.
“The political earthquake that just occurred in San Francisco should be a dire warning to the national Democratic Party, because the same fault line stretches across the country and the tremors are only increasing,” Bloomberg wrote in The Washington Post on Tuesday.
The business tycoon made sure to clarify that he is still a Democrat, and he does not want to see a red wave in the 2022 midterms.
“I continue to believe that a healthy and vibrant Democratic Party remains essential to beating back the Republican Party’s dangerous turn toward authoritarianism and its tolerance for election subversion,” Bloomberg wrote.
“But I am deeply concerned that, absent an immediate course correction, the party is headed for a wipeout in November, up and down the ballot.”
During the 2021 off-year elections, Republicans notched big wins in Virginia and New Jersey, headlined by Republican Glenn Youngkin’s win in Virginia’s governor’s race.
Bloomberg wrote that those victories were due in large part to parents’ concerns about public schools, and he feels the Democratic Party has not adequately addressed this concern.
“Three months after Republicans scored major election upsets in Virginia and New Jersey, largely because of the frustration parents felt with Democratic officials who catered to teachers’ unions and culture warriors at the expense of children, voters in San Francisco recalled three school board members by margins of nearly three to one,” Bloomberg wrote.
“Coming from America’s most liberal city, those results should translate into a 7 to 8 on the Richter scale, because the three main factors that drove the recall are not unique to the Bay Area.”
Bloomberg wrote that there were three main reasons that a far-left city like San Francisco saw voters recall school board members who were friendly with Democrats. The first was public schools’ failure to re-open even after it was clear that COVID-19 was no longer a viable threat in classrooms.
“As private schools opened, public schools remained closed,” Bloomberg wrote. “Tragically, that failure will do lasting damage to many students and their career prospects, especially those from low-income communities.”
Second, Bloomberg wrote, San Francisco public schools made matters worse with their insistence on “political correctness.” While he felt they should have been focused on re-opening schools, they were instead worried about re-naming them.
“Instead of reopening schools, they spent their time renaming them, stripping off the names of historic figures like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln before a public outcry forced them to reverse course,” Bloomberg wrote.
“Meanwhile, parents struggled to keep their heads above water as they tried to manage having their children at home.”
Finally, Bloomberg wrote, the school board members who were voted out made a huge mistake by voting to end merit-based admission at an elite school in the name of “equity.”
According to KABC-TV, San Francisco’s Board of Education voted to end merit-based admissions at Lowell High School in February 2021.
Board members said they were concerned about “racist incidents” at the school, and said they felt the racial makeup of the student body contributed to the problem.
Fifty percent of the students at Lowell were Asian as of February 2021, and 18 percent were white, KABC reported. Only 2 percent of its students were black. According to a March 2021 report in the San Franciso news site SFist, the student population of the school district is 6 percent black.
Bloomberg wrote that moving to a lottery-based system for picking students is unlikely to solve the problem of alleged “racism” at the school.
“Make no mistake: Lowering standards in the name of fairness only exacerbates injustice and inequality,” Bloomberg wrote.
“Closing achievement gaps must be done by creating more high-quality schools, not undermining existing ones. Voters understand this, and they will keep casting their ballots for candidates who do, too.”
Bloomberg concluded that the Democratic Party must use the recent recalls in San Francisco as a wake-up call ahead of the midterms. If they do not, he wrote, Democrats will feel the consequences at the ballot box in November.
“Swing voters will decide the 2022 midterm elections, and right now, polls show they are swinging away from Democrats,” Bloomberg wrote. “The earthquake that shook San Francisco needs to shake up our party, before voters do it themselves in November.”
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