— Why the Voucher Issue Really Could Hurt the Dems – A dissent?from last week’s instant contrarianism By Mickey?Kaus takes apart hard-line Democrat fantasies comparing school choice to abortion, on the political side:
What commentators did say was that the voucher decision was a boost for vouchers, which seems undeniably true. (Even if vouchers don’t spread very rapidly, it has to help that they are now a constitutional possibility. Roe may have hurt liberals, but it’s hard to argue it didn’t increase abortions.)
Democrats are indeed vulnerable on school choice, as soon as voters understand the issue, which they don’t yet, as a whole. Inner-city blacks and rural religious whites do, because they face the hard, entrenched incompetence of the teachers’ union, but most middle-class, urban whites are blissfully ignorant of the declining quality of the schools. Democrats are wholly-owned by the teachers’ union, and they can’t afford to alienate them, while the children getting sub-standard education don’t vote.
Education in America is so bad we’d be in an economic tailspin if it weren’t for the first-generation immigrants who make our tech sector work; as soon as the “Occupied” sign goes on over our immigration policy, we’ll see that.