Jennifer Berkshire inquires into why so many Democratic leaders and pundits have refused to defend public schools, even though most parents are satisfied with their public schools. As the public schools are blamed for all the evils of modern life by extremists like Chris Rufo, Democrats refuse to stand up for the public schools. She explores why in this article.
Parents are not abandoning the public schools, but Democratic politicians are.
She begins:
Last spring, taking a break from waging conspiratorial campaigns against the republic, an assortment of luminaries associated with the Claremont Institute gathered to lay out a plan to foment a culture war against the nation’s schools. The Clubhouse event, entitled “Building A New Right: Red States vs. Wokeness,” featured a grab bag of Claremont fellows and friends. The star attraction was Manhattan Institute agitprop specialist Christopher Rufo, chief sower of the panics against critical race theory (CRT) and “grooming.”
In a now familiar exercise, Rufo sketched out his campaign to make CRT toxic as part of a larger propaganda war against public institutions. The ultimate goal, he explained, was essentially to do away with those institutions and redirect school funding to families and individuals based on their “values.” Rufo waxed apocalyptic about the scourge of “wokeness,” and yet he struck a hopeful note. After all, he reminded listeners, it had only taken the country a few years to go from the Black Panthers to Nixon.
In the ensuing months, Rufo’s propaganda campaign would grow increasingly lurid, but on this occasion, he urged his audience to raise the discussion to a higher level. Focus on “excellence,” he admonished them, and attack public schools for failing to meet that standard. Conservative communications guru David Reaboi, who helped seed a previous moral panic on the right against the sinister spread of Sharia law, weighed in with some messaging advice of his own: Go full bore against the teachers unions. Do damage.
Today, this coordinated plan to wage a public relations war against the nation’s public schools is an undeniable success. Forty-two states have moved to restrict teaching about oppression, race or gender. According to one estimate, more than one third of students in the country attend school in a state where educators are now subject to some kind of classroom gag order.
The achievement of Rufo and his allies is all the more astonishing, given the deep unpopularity of the policies they champion. Polls consistently show that voters across party lines are repelled by the GOP’s education extremism. Across the chasm of our current political divide, bipartisan majorities are largely in agreement that banning books and gagging teachers is bad.
And for all of the insurgent right’s bold rhetoric about mining parent outrage for electoral gold, the polls that matter most have shown remarkably poor results for candidates running on scorched-earth education platforms. In New Hampshire, New York, Montana, Georgia, Wisconsin and beyond, voters are rejectingright-wing culture warriors, often by wide margins—a movement that might be summed up as “keeping the crazy away from the kids.”
There’s just one problem, though: The leadership of the Democratic party doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.
This is a particularity relevant topic at this moment. A senior advisor to Arne Duncan and a Pahara Fellow (Gates) are heading the oligarch-funded Campaign for Our Shared Future. (Politico’s Juan Perez, 8-1-2022, described the organization’s stated aim relative to K-12 education and politics.)
Anything connected to Gates should be viewed with great wariness.
The Campaign for Our Shared Future looks to be a group organizing people to fight book burning, curriculum restrictions, history gag laws, and so on. They look like they are among the good guys.
From Juan Perez’s article:
Their goal: Organize parents, educators and students to press against conservative-led legislation and political rhetoric targeting how race, gender and curriculum are addressed at K-12 campuses.
“looks” that can build strength for later purposes.
Given that Gates appears to be no fan of democracy (his funding of the campaign to oust Washington state Supreme Court justices) and his narrowed interest in curriculum subjects, opportunism should always be on the radar for citizens.
His agenda aligned with Koch’s for privatization and I don’t see a change in that. In 2020, Gates sought out a Catholic university in D.C. for a study of conditions in the U.S. that lead to authoritarianism. Odd choice.
Was Roland Fryer, funded by Gates, a champion for democratic values, civil rights or Black people harmed by systemic racism, etc.? How about other people working in the Gates organization?
“odd choice”- a school that didn’t admit Black students until the 1960’s and that has never had a female president in its entire history.
Answer:
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and some more $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Yep.
U.S. House Dems (36+) are asking the IRS to look into the Family Research Council’s claim to be a church for tax purposes. A comparison and contrast with state Catholic Conferences would be interesting as would a review of right wing political messages from the Churches’ pulpits.
With 60+ percent of conservative religious voting for Trump in 2020, note to Dem. strategists, you’ve been pulling your punches about religion and it hasn’t positioned the Party for wins.
“measuring learning is racist.”
How about “measuring learning is illogical.”
Yes, illogical and INVALID.
Here’s a list of top Blue donors. Some of the names are familiar to those of us that have been studying the attack public schools. Big contributors include Bloomberg, Hastings and Broad. There may also be other billionaires and corporations that promote privatization in Blue PACs. https://bluetent.us/funding/top-democratic-donors/
As long as there are common goods out there that some billionaire covets, he or she will seek political advantage. Add Gates to your list. He funded sessions at the BiPartisan Policy Center promoting privatization.
Another set of villains are at AIPAC which is keeping progressives off of the ballot.
The biggest villains remain the conservatives on SCOTUS.
Blaming public schools for just about every problem in the US started back in the 1980s when Reagan was president after his admisntration released the flawed, misleading Nation at Risk report.
Although another study a few years later pointed out all the flaws and misleading data in that report, no president or the media has set the record straight.
For decades the public schools have been and still are blamed for recreational drug use, adolescents getting STDs, poverty, teen pregnancies, child suicides, the largest prison population in the world by coining the misleading false phrase “school to prison pipeline.”
I’m sure the blame game list is a lot longer, but it was all crap as I worked 60 to 100 hour weeks as a public school teacher from 1975 to 2005. About 25 hours a week teaching and the rest grading, attending mostly useless meetings and workshops, correcting student work, calling parents, planning lessons and grading.
I even had students laugh at me when their standardized test scores were below grade level. The destroy public education campaign caused them to think it was the teacher’s fault they weren’t reading, paying attention in class, doing classwork or homework, et al.
If they didn’t do homework, to them it was the teachers’ fault. If they didn’t read books outside of the classroom, it was the teachers fault. I even had parents blame me for their kids not learning because their kids said I was boring so they refused to pay attention.
My reply was always the same. A few miles from our high school was another high school in another district in a wealthier community with little or no child poverty. The child poverty rate at the high school where I taught was 70% or higher.
I’d reply, “Your teachers at Nogales High are not responsible for your test scores. If we switched teachers with Walnut High, the students in Walnut would still score high with us teaching them, and your scores would still be low after being taught by Walnut High’s teachers. The reason your scores are low is because many of you don’t do homework, you hate to read (I heard that a lot over the years), and you don’t pay attention to your teachers or bother to focus on your classwork.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/29/604986823/what-a-nation-at-risk-got-wrong-and-right-about-u-s-schools
Good answer.
And this post: truer words never spoken.
Related questions: (1) Why did Diane Ravitch implicitly refuse to defend public schools when she was raising her own kids and instead sent them to private schools? (2) Why does she oppose giving parents school choice when many parents have good reason to believe that their kids’ assigned public schools are bad, even unsafe, for their kids? (3) Why does she believe that only affluent parents should effectively be able to exercise school choice?
Wait, not yet, let me get a some beer and popcorn first. I’ll be right back. In my comfy chair, of course. OK, you can go now.
I favor school choice so long as you pay for it yourself. Government should not pay for private choices. Government should not pay for you to have a security guard of your own, a private swimming pool, a private beach, a personal fire department.
If you want to send your child to religious school, pay for it yourself.
No voucher pays for elite private schools, which have tuition from $30,000-75,000 per year.
Anyone who says that a voucher will give kids the same choices as affluent parents (as Betsy DeVos did) is lying.
Voucher schools get worse results than public schools that kids leave. That’s why voucher schools have high attrition rates.
Chelsea,
Taxpayers don’t want to be burdened with the oversight costs to protect their money, potentially, squandered at every lame choice of school, selected by an unwise, ideologically driven or self-serving parent.
Ohioans can’t recover their money from the ECOT $1 bil. boondoggle . brought to the state by donations to the Republican state Party and by oligarch promotion of privatization like that of Fordham.
We, the taxpayers, want to elect the schools’ overseers as is our right in a democracy. We don’t want children indoctrinated into the Catholic view that Jesus doesn’t want women in leadership roles nor do we want them citing an altered U.S. pledge of allegiance that includes Catholic doctrine. Look no further than the SCOTUS jurist majority to see how religious belief counters rational thinking and replaces man’s law with God’s law (as interpreted by mostly White men).
We, the taxpayers, women, men, Whites, POC, believe in civil rights employment law which religious schools are exempted from.
Chelsea Szews,
Your premise is false.
In NYC, ALL parents have a choice.
They have a choice of real public schools where all students have rights.
They don’t get to have taxpayers pay for parents who demand their kids are in schools where the SCHOOLS have the choice — the choice to abuse students, to teach them racist or hateful ideas, to force them to pray twice a day according to a specific religion’s beliefs.
Why do you demand that taxpayers for that?
I don’t know what education led Josh Duggar’s wife to have 7 children. I don’t know if she has ever held a job or if any tax dollars are going to support the family.
Chelsea Szews thinks I should pay for the type of education a family patriarch chooses, one where girls learn early to embrace the idea of staying married to men even when they face long prison terms for child pornography.
Media has reported about the taxpayer cost of polygamous wives out west, to feed their kids and for their prescribed coping pills. Chelsea thinks I should pay for a perpetuation of that learned behavior in the schools that the male head of households choose.
I view Chelsea and Bill Gates as people trying to destroy the fabric of my community, as threatening the survival of my community through loss of the economic multiplier effect and, as enablers to the theft of community assets. Citizens should run Chelsea out of town on a rail.
WOW! Your hate is palpable. Maybe you need to see someone to get some “coping pills”.
Lisa
Anyone who isn’t outraged by the theft of democracy and by the atrocities inflicted by SCOTUS is likely voting for the party of Trump, who is a man that should be in jail as a traitor to the United States.
Fortunately, the “hate” that the voters of Kansas felt, propelled them to action in standing up for the rights of women in yesterday’s vote. It’s offensive that citizens in states like Ohio are too mellow to fight for the rights of rape victims like 10- year-old girls further victimized by the heartbeat bills of White, Catholic politicians and by men, like AG Yost who go onto Fox and falsely allege the crime never happened.
Don’t suggest I back off while you reinforce the prejudices of your church and gaslight for conservative religion.
A woke populace, an American majority’s activism accomplished-
(1) a 60% vote for women’s rights in Kansas yesterday.
“Attack, attack, attack: Former GOP strategist says Democrats have plenty of ammo to go on offense” (Raw Story). The strategist pointed out (2) the legislative wins of the current Democratic majority in Congress. He described the Republican Party as a governing party obsessed with bathrooms and bedrooms. He should have added, obsessed with keeping women and Black people in second class citizenship and obsessed with guns and GOP Jesus.
HARSHEST TRUTH: ‘Today, this coordinated plan to wage a public relations war against the nation’s public schools is an undeniable success.”
Why?
Look at what happened to Mayor de Blasio when he stood up and defended public schools against charters.
I have no idea why the progressives left him out to dry — I heard only silence from NYC progressives. Blaming de Blasio for not standing up for public schools in the “right” way, which he then tried to do only to be attacked for again not standing up for public schools in the “right” way.
Consider why Bernie Sanders refused to endorse the pro-public school candidate, Cynthia Nixon, in the Democratic primary running against Andrew Cuomo and why Bernie Sanders DID endorse the DFER ed reform Democrat of the month to defeat the pro-public education candidate in the Virginia primary for Governor.
The democrats who defend public schools, like deBlasio, are victimized by a right wing smear machine that is helped by no one on the left standing up to it but instead joining in.
Bernie doesn’t support DFER candidates or “public” charters because some rich donor is paying him to. AOC doesn’t refrain from criticizing charters because some rich donor is paying her to.
Until we understand that the right wing propaganda machine needs to be identified, called out, attacked, and discredited, instead of enabled (either by ignoring it or by conceding most of the pro-reform points), there are going to be few politicians who really stand up for public education.
Until we stop having the discussion entirely based on the right wing framing of this issue, I don’t see this changing.
I had hopes that Bernie and AOC could educate folks about public education instead of using the right wing framing in this debate, but I haven’t seen it. No one really talks about it.
The best defense of public schools I ever heard came from the so-called “conservative” Dem most hated by progressives — she who may not be named here. She was shut down immediately but she said it clearly and if folks like Bernie Sanders and AOC were speaking like that frequently, I believe there would be more Dems like the supposed “conservative” ones like Tim Kaine and Ralph Northam who were standing up for public education.
I heard folks on here who should have known better conceding the right wing propaganda that demonized a pro-public education Democrat who stood up to the anti-CRT rhetoric.
A Dem in Virginia stood up to the anti-CRT folks and defended public schools. The far right propaganda machine took a few words out of context from a speech and destroyed him. And I saw at least 3 people I respect ON THIS BLOG who cited the right wing framing as “truth” and joined in to legitimize and amplify that right wing framing.
If teachers don’t stand up for the few politicians that stand up for public schools, then why are they surprised that there aren’t more Dems standing up to defend public schools?
I will confess, when the Obamas chose to send their girls to Sidwell Friends, it was, in hindsight, another sign that he would be transitional and not transformative. Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, had the honesty and sincere conviction to send Amy to Stevens Elementary on 21st St. NW, just off of K St. (The same school where parents were not so welcoming of Cruella DeVos.)
And if you remember, Obama applauded the Rhode Island hs that fired its teachers over low test scores. They were all hired back, fortunately.
Obama never came to the NEA RA, nothing. I still can’t believe the numbers of teachers who love him
So 1/3 of students live in states that have passed some restrictions on teaching history and about race. On a positive note that means 2/3 live in states that have passed no such restrictions. I might want to start a list of things those states that 1/3 lives in, also have in common.
Maybe we better not.
Three times as many guns as people. Very high rates of teenaged pregnancy and opioid addiction. Trump rallies. Nascar. Rodeos. Rattlesnake hunts. Large numbers of megachurches and strip clubs. Semiliterate adult populations. Large numbers of people working in minimum wage jobs. Large numbers of unemployed.
All of the old confederate states banned CRT. Surprised? They want to go back to the 1840’s.
Berkshire: “Still, despite these clear signals of robust support for quality public schools across the political landscape, it’s not clear that Democrats even remember how to defend public education.”
Yup. Another one of those places where the rubber meets the road. Dems need to pull harder away from that sticky, sticky neoliberalism. Out with the “New,” in with the old! Politicians, unglue yourself from donors and represent your voters!
I’ve been alive for half a century and I have never heard of this “Democrats defending public schools” thing. I heard it used to be, but that was before I was born. Is defending public schools what Senator Booker does when he’s not hanging out with Betsy DeVos? Nah, probably not. And Duncan was worse than DeVos. Democrats defend deregulation, data driven drivel, digital doodads, and deep-pocketed donors. Dumb.
sadly, yes
I have a young African-American friend who recently finished his Master’s in Library Science. I am astonished at his optimism but wonder if this is like having just finished a course in typewriter repair. Clearly, at least half of the country doesn’t read and wants only Bible Story Time picture books in schools. In my last school, where there would have been a library, there was a monstrosity called the Media Center that had a tiny handful of books but was mostly dumb terminals used for standardized testing and standardized test practice.
Thank you, Bill Gates, and all your suckling sycophants, for pretty much ruining U.S. K-12 education.
& Obama & Arne Duncan, as well. (Worse than transitional, Greg B.)
& then…John King!!! OY, Obama…
Some sort of liberal in the contemporary sense. He definitely is a liberal in the sense of “classical liberal.” He could easily have structured his bailout so that the payments went through homeowners to the banks, and the homeowners kept their homes. But no, he bailed out the banks and basically said __U to the homeowners. Just as, say, George Bush, Jr. would have done.
There are still people who think that Obama was some sort of liberal. These are not people who think carefully and pay attention.
The New library science: the study of libraries through the excavation of sites and the analysis of novels, encyclopedias and other reference materials, card catalogs, book shelves and other library remains in landfills.
Alas!!!!!
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/the-limits-of-learning/
The answer to Jennifer Berkshire’s question is, in a word — MONEY.
Obama would not have been elected President had it not been for the huge financial backing he received from the billionaire hedge fund moguls who founded the pro-charter/anti-teachers’ unions “Democrats for Education Reform” (DFER). What DFER got in return was Obama appointing their guy Arne Duncan as U.S. Secretary of Education, who piloted a mammoth expansion of charter schools. DFER began grooming Obama while he was still a senator and was chosen to deliver the main speech at DFER’s founding ceremony. And as President he delivered just what DFER wanted.
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2010 “Citizens United” decision, in 2022 Big Money now utterly owns American politics, and Big Money — Banks, Wall Street, corporations, and billionaires — fundamentally hate democracy because a genuine democracy allows mere citizens to, through their representatives, tax Big Money entities to pay their fair share of societal costs and to restrict their activities that in any way harm the public good.
In the 12 years since Citizens United, America’s political landscape had been wholly turned into a playing field dominated by Big Money, and both Republicans and Democrats must do the bidding of Big Money — the Republicans can be direct about doing that; Democrats need to mask the reality from their constituents and are more subtle in how they go about serving their Big Money masters…but serve them, they do.
Public schools, because of united unionized teachers, can resist the Big Money pressure to indoctrinate children with the Big Money message, but corporate charter schools can — and do — weave that message into the fabric of every lesson.
So, Democrats will continue to undermine public schools in a more subtle manner than Republicans — but undermine them, they will.
Yeah, it’s a shame that the candidate who lost to Obama in 2008 because she wasn’t funded by the “huge financial backing he received from the billionaire hedge fund moguls who founded the pro-charter/anti-teachers’ unions “Democrats for Education Reform” (DFER)” didn’t win in 2016.
Then the Supreme Court could have had a 6-3 liberal majority (or at least 5-4) and Citizens United – which you correctly cite as a big problem – would have been repealed.
Instead, some voters in 2016 voted specifically to prevent a Democrat from winning (when there was an open Supreme Court seat!) because they believed it was not at all important to have RBG leading a 5-4 liberal majority that would repeal Citizens United.
Their votes against the Democrat insured that Citizens United was enshrined in law for a long time.
& now he has an $11.75 million waterfront estate in Martha’s Vineyard AND a mansion in Washington, D.C. AND the house (it has also been called a “mansion”) in Chicago AND just completed or is completing construction of a new home replacing one bought in 2015 for $8.7 mil. (3 acres in Hawaii, another mansion, making some neighbors unhappy–environmental problems “w/a seawall on the property, & they (environmentalists) say these seawalls are eroding the coastline.” So, all that & a Nobel Peace Prize (for what?), too. Made out like a bandit. &, hey, no teacher I know gets a 6-figure governmental pension.
Yeah, nice work if you can get it. & thanks for sticking the knife in the back of public education in America…while sending your own kids to private school.
Obama’s opponents were Romney of Bain Capital and McCain/Palin. McCain married money.
Understood, Linda. We all are aware of the oligarchs on the other side.
But, still, really, what did the Obamas REALLY do for struggling Americans?* (In last year noted–same article I’d gleaned real estate info from–they’d given $64K ((+ some change) in charitable donations. SIXTY FOUR K!
I’m sorry… underwhelming @best.
& now–I’m breathless!!–M.O. has another book (💰💰💰💰💰) coming out. I’m all over myself getting to the nearest bookstore to advance order. Not even asking my local library to order it.
*Yeah, the ACA, aka “Obamacare.”
FDR did this, LBJ & Clintons tried.
Again, remain more than underwhelmed. Ruining… RUINING American public schools is their sad, sad legacy, IMO.
Obama and Hillary were steered by Podesta and Tom Daschle of neoliberal CAP and the BiPartisan Policy Center, respectively. A true liberal wasn’t going to be selected by the Party establishment in 2008, in 2012 nor, in 2016. The wealthy Trump supporters in AIPAC are added to the mix in 2022, defeating Democratic progressives.
Michael Moore’s film made clear what Obama was. Never the less, having a Black person as Pres. was a good thing. Obama wasn’t Clarence Thomas and Leonard Leo didn’t become kingmaker.
Obama’s monied donors have also used their clout and oversized wallets to mar the beauty of Jackson Park along Chicago’s lakefront.
Obama’s presidency represents the triumph of identity politics over substance. It is no surprise that it was a Pearson subsidiary that that offered the Obamas a $64 million book contract.
This article is well worth reading:
“The New Ozymandias: Twilight Reflections on the Obama Presidential Center”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/08/20/the-new-ozymandias-twilight-reflections-on-the-obama-presidential-center/
Thanks, Eleanor. Yes, NOT happy about this in Chicago.
Why don’t they just fit the presidential library into one of their oversized homes? How about Hawaii?
AIPAC defeated the Democratic progressive, Andy Levin. Some of AIPAC’s funders are Trump supporters.
AIPAC is a vile organization that is usurping our democracy.
Are people starting to wake up? I’ve been complaining about Democrats for years, on all kinds of topics, and all I get in return is the “You must love Trump” bs, or something similar. Obama had Arne Duncan and Rahm Emanuel, two huge POS. He was no friend of education, and I say Duncan was worse than DeVos.
What the GOP has is straight up ugliness, while the Dems hide it behind the facade of civility. I say Obama killed more people than Trump ever did with his Drone Wars. “Oops, a bus full of school children were killed by drones, my bad. But aren’t I articulate and long, tall and cool?”
Obama was deporting all kinds of people, including vets who were citizens. He had kids in cages, but no one gave a rat’s a$$. He sent toddlers into immigration court, but he was so much better and wonderful, because he gave judges training in early childhood learning. Die hard Dems just say “THAT’S FAKE NEWS.” Hmmmmm…..who does that sound like?
Who has brought us closer to nuclear war, Trump or Biden? And no, that doesn’t mean I like Trump. He’s a vile POS, but Biden is no better.
Keep voting for the lesser of two evils, all it means is the evil comes more slowly than it would under the GOP. Every election is the “THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIFETIME.”
Look where our country is right now. It’s the GOP taking us to hell in a handbasket and the Democrats asking for more money so they can pretend to fight it.
Wake up. The Dems are not our friends or saviors. Now come the comments I usually get “What are we supposed to do, vote for the GOP?” For all this talk of non-binary thinking, we’re a totally binary country and can’t even think outside that box.
My bad. I wrote Diane instead of Laura, and I can’t change it. Sorry.
Your comment is full of lies.
No one here thinks that the Democrats are our “saviors”. You lied about that, just like you lied throughout 2016 when you keep posting how wonderful it would be if we all voted against the Democrat because it was very important that a Democrat NOT appoint the Justice that would repeal Citizens United and hurt the right wing Republicans and corporate backed Democrats.
You smear AOC and the Squad all the time with your nasty lies about how they are no better than Trump.
Your fear of AOC and the Squad is the real reason that you spent all of 2016 fighting so hard to make sure no Democrat allowed RBG to lead a Supreme Court to repeal Citizens United.
“Laura” or “diane” or dienne77 or whoever this person is sounds like one of the Germans insisting that the only way to change the parties who oppose the Nazis was to vote against them and turn Germany into a fascist state. It was a lie then and it is a lie now.
If you cared about the progressive future, you would have made sure to vote for a Supreme Court that would repeal Citizens United, not a Supreme Court that doesn’t care about voting rights.
You voted to send this country 5 decades backward and then you whine because Democrats don’t make enough progress forward after you have made it much harder.
Maybe some people believe you aren’t secretly celebrating every right wing victory. I am glad Linda sees through you.
Those who take your comment seriously demonstrate their own hypocrisy.
LOL, NYCPSP can’t conceive of the idea that anyone besides crazy little old me has the same ideas, so, obviously, the only thing her mind can conceive is that it must be a sockpuppet.
For the record, I have never posted on this blog except as Dienne or dienne77. Diane could verify that by checking the email addresses and IP addresses.
I know it’s tough when reality intrudes on your little echo chamber bubble here, but more and more people are waking up to the collusion between the Republicans and Democrats (in fact, the merger of the establishment/neocon Republicans with the Democrats, as evidenced by the fact that Democrats are now praising Darth Cheney of all people).
Come now, Dienne, surely even you must admit that a Supreme Court with justices appointed by Hillary Clinton would have never overturned Roe; would never have ordered the state of Maine to fund religious schools; would never have stripped the EPA of the power to issue regulations to protect the environment. What fresh horrors lie ahead? With six conservatives—five hard-core extremists—the Trump Court is very different from one that would have been dominated by Democratic appointees. Anyone who says it didn’t matter whether Trump or Hillary won in 2016 lives in a planet I do not inhabit.
As much as Putin would like it, after Roe (and, Stein in 2016), you are not going to convince enough people with the lame argument about the two parties being alike.
Laura (not Diane):
Your comment baffles me.
You think that Democrats are worse than Republicans.
That’s crazy talk.
A Supreme Court appointed by Democrats would not have overturned Roe v Wade.
You must love Trump because what you wrote suggests you voted for him.