Democratic Mom Slammed for Wanting Schools Open Doubles Down: Liberals ‘Must Acknowledge Harm’ to Kids
A California mother and proponent of keeping schools open amid the Covid-19 pandemic is feeling politically isolated after she was attacked by fellow progressive moms.
Rebecca Bodenheimer shared her story in Politico on Monday, when she wrote an op-ed titled, “How School Closures Made Me Question My Progressive Politics.”
The mom of two wrote,
June 26, 2020, was the day I went public with just how angry I was about my son’s school closing down for Covid, and my life hasn’t been the same since. I had begun to sense a difference between my own feelings and those of my mom’s text group, which included nine of us.
Bodenheimer described how she found herself ostracized from her social circle when she challenged school closures. She concluded the lengthy post:
I’m still attempting to hold onto the progressive label while calling out the policies I see as antithetical to it, but the longer fellow progressives support new school closures and other policies that restrict kids’ lives in order to allay the anxieties of adults, and have been shown to cause far more harm than benefit, the more alienated I feel.
Bodenheimer joined Erin Burnett on CNN’s Out Front Tuesday to talk about the now-viral Politico article, and how her experiences over the past 18 months have left her in an ideological funk.
Burnett asked her about the emotional toll the ordeal took on her, and how being isolated left her questioning her political identity.
“You talk about how you are now experiencing a political identity crisis as, as a progressive Democrat, due to your own party’s response to school closures,” Burnett said. “Does this change how you possibly vote?”
Bodenhemier responded that she could not imagine herself voting for someone such as former President Donald Trump, but she did explain that Democrats will need to earn back her vote.
“I’m not sure if I would say that it changes how I would vote, particularly, you know, in a national election,” Bodenhemier said. “I still don’t feel that I could, you know, ever support, you know, some of the enabling that the Republicans did with the last president and a whole host of other things that have taken place more recently.”
She added,
I think that the larger point is that a lot of Democratic parents’ trust have been eroded. And, you know, we felt that we were not able to rely on public schools anymore, which, are a very essential public good. And so, I think one of the things that we would like is for Democrats, you know, to acknowledge the harm that this has caused and not only to kids, but to women.
Bodenheimer also complained that school closures set women back significantly.
She concluded, “In order to, you know, get people like me really back onboard, excited about supporting Democrats, we want them to really commit to never doing this again, where schools, you know, schools need to be the last to close and the first to open.”
Watch above, via CNN.
