IS THIS THE REAL ISSUE?  I THINK SO.  Is education the hidden, giant issue of this campaign?  Yes.  It hasn't been discussed as much as the economy and crime, but you feel it there, and you see it in the stunning movement of suburban women to the GOP.  We saw it last year in the victory of Republican Glenn Youngkin, who flipped Virginia red and became governor, largely on the education issue.

There is a rule of life:  Mothers take care of their cubs, and if someone hurts their cubs, mothers react.  Many mothers clearly feel that the Democratic Party, with its crazy, "progressive" education views, has hurt their cubs.  Watch those mothers vote.

Steve Hayward, at Powerline, has a good take:

The most remarkable finding of the latest Wall Street Journal poll on the mid-term election is the yuuuge swing of suburban women toward the GOP since August:

The new survey shows that white women living in suburban areas, who make up 20% of the electorate, now favor Republicans for Congress by 15 percentage points, moving 27 percentage points away from Democrats since the Journal’s August poll.

That is one whopping move. As the Journal article explains, the shift isn’t just limited to congressional vote preference, but seems to be cascading down ticket. What explains this?

The Journal speculates that the reaction to the Dobbs decision has worn off, and while this is possible, the longer you think about it the less persuasive it seems. What has changed since August? If anything, you’d expect the opposite: Democrats have intensified their anti-Dobbs messaging, which ought to reinforce the supposed pro-choice leanings of suburban women. Is it inflation? Inflation was just as bad in August, so this explanation is also less than fully convincing for such a large shift. Crime? Same thing.

The opinion polls all cite inflation and crime as the driving issues, but I’ve noticed some glaring omissions from the issue panels the pollsters have been using to identify the key movers of voter opinion: the COVID school closure hangover, and the cultural issues involved in public education today (especially “gender fluidity” and related enthusiasms of the cultural left). Virtually no poll asks any questions about these issues, even though they played a prominent role in the Virginia governor’s race last year.

Even though the Democrat-media-complex whipped up a fury over Gov. DeSantis’s supposed “don’t say gay” bill in Florida last year, polling showed that even a majority of Democrats supported the bill that merely prohibited sex education before the third grade.

Local school board elections are suddenly hot around the country, with a growing backlash against a public education establishment that has been captured by the left. And when even San Francisco voters recall three of their woke school board members by a landslide, you’d think pollsters would start paying attention to the issue of education.

COMMENT:  Read the rest.  It's well worth it.  Why do I think the words "school choice"  will play a prominent role in the 2024 presidential campaign?

November 2, 2022