Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (D) is worried that the Democratic Party is about to face an electoral catastrophe if it does not perform an “immediate course correction.”
In an op-ed published by Bloomberg on Tuesday, the former mayor argued that the recent decision to recall three members of San Francisco’s school board is a “political earthquake” that “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.”
“I am deeply concerned that, absent an immediate course correction, the party is headed for a wipeout in November, up and down the ballot,” he added.
Bloomberg pointed out that 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.”
And after those elections, voters in San Francisco recalled three school board members. He added, “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.”
The first factor Bloomberg listed is that “school board members failed to show any urgency in reopening schools even when it was clear that doing so was safe — and that remote classes were leaving students further and further behind.”
“Second, the school board members seemed more concerned with political correctness than educating children. 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. Meanwhile, parents struggled to keep their heads above water as they tried to manage having their children at home,” he added.
The third factor the former mayor pointed to was that school board members voted to “eliminate merit-based admissions at one of the nation’s top-performing schools.”
“Make no mistake: Lowering standards in the name of fairness only exacerbates injustice and inequality. 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,” he said.
Bloomberg added, “A recent Democratic Party poll showed that voters perceive it as being too ‘focused on the culture wars’ — from renaming schools to defunding the police. But the advice that party leaders are giving members of Congress — to ‘correct the record‘ when Republicans criticize them on schools and culture — isn’t going to cut it.”
Instead, he argued that voters should “hear from Democrats that schools remained closed for too long, and that improving schools means closing achievement gaps, not eliminating standards.”
“Swing voters will decide the 2022 midterm elections, and right now, polls show they are swinging away from Democrats. The earthquake that shook San Francisco needs to shake up our party, before voters do it themselves in November,” he concluded.
Bloomberg’s warning comes as RealClearPolitics’ average of polls shows that Republicans have an advantage on the question of which party Americans would like to see control Congress.