A left-wing outlet launched a slam piece on Thursday against Vice President Kamala Harris, challenging the narrative surrounding her role in reopening schools during the pandemic. Written by Nancy Rommelmann from The Atlantic, the article discussed the veracity of claims made by Democrat leaders, including Joe Biden and Harris.
Rommelmann’s piece took aim at the Democrats for their selective memory regarding the prolonged school closures during the pandemic. She argued that the closures, which were more extensive in Democrat-controlled areas, were influenced heavily by the Biden administration’s policies—a point that contradicted Biden’s recent statements lauding Harris’s efforts. “Well, during the pandemic, Kamala helped states and cities get their schools back open,” Biden claimed, a statement that Rommelmann sharply disputed.
“In fact, America’s public schools were kept closed in Democratic-run cities and states well into the Biden administration, as a direct result of Biden-administration policies,” Rommelmann wrote. “Democrats might count on Americans to be forgiving, but they are not stupid, and they would do well to not let the pageantry of televised politics obfuscate the fact that they are being lied to.”
The Atlantic piece continued:
But then we couldn’t get off. We were captive to decisions sold in the name of science but created more crudely by teachers’ unions and political appointees. Children were among the worst off as America—blue America, really, like the host city to the Democratic National Convention—kept its schools closed longer than any peer country.
Does the Biden administration expect voters to not remember this? In our supposed exuberance over Kamala Harris, are we somehow supposed to invent a memory of her heroic effort to pry open schools? Although gaslighting is a term we should probably retire for overuse, it’s worth keeping in mind as we look at the 2020–21 school-reopening timeline we are being asked to magically revise in 2024, with an eye toward what, if anything, Harris had to do with it.
Biden promised during the 2020 campaign to get schools open once it was safe. That December, after he’d won the election but before taking office, Biden further vowed to reopen schools within the first 100 days. That pledge raised concerns with teachers, who did not want to go back to the classroom unless they received certain assurances.
The critique went deeper, questioning the overall handling of the pandemic by both political parties but focusing particularly on the Democrats’ narrative around school reopening. Rommelmann suggested that the administration’s claims about Harris’s pivotal role are more about political convenience than factual accuracy. “America still hasn’t reckoned with its pandemic failures, and that’s true well beyond school closures,” she asserted. Quotes from the article highlight a sense of frustration with what is seen as a revisionist history by the Democrats.
In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Harris unloaded a series of criticisms against Trump. Speaking on Thursday, Harris didn’t hold back, listing numerous grievances she had with Trump’s policies and past actions. While some of Harris’ points stretched the truth about the former president’s platform, others ventured into falsehood.
