Left-wing outlet The Atlantic published a critical article by Nancy Rommelmann on Thursday that challenged Vice President Kamala Harris’s role in reopening schools during the pandemic. The piece scrutinized the claims made by Democratic leaders, including Joe Biden and Harris, regarding the school closures.
Rommelmann’s article criticized the Democrats for their selective recollection of the pandemic’s school closures, which were notably longer in areas controlled by Democrats. She argued that these closures were significantly influenced by the Biden administration’s policies, contrary to Biden’s recent praise of Harris’s efforts to reopen schools. “Well, during the pandemic, Kamala helped states and cities get their schools back open,” Biden had claimed—a statement Rommelmann vehemently 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.”
Rommelmann 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 delved deeply into the handling of the pandemic by both political parties, with particular focus on the Democrats’ narrative regarding school reopening. Rommelmann suggested that the administration’s assertions about Harris’s crucial role are more about political expediency 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.
Disclaimer: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.