Former Transportation Secretary and future presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg wants a mulligan on Democrats shutting down schools during the pandemic.
Buttigieg was asked what he would say to his past self if he could time travel back to right after he endorsed Joe Biden for president. His answer was “one, for the love of God, figure out a way to get the schools open sooner.” This is part of Buttigieg’s efforts to distance himself from Biden’s presidency as he prepares his 2028 campaign. Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took its direction on school reopenings from teachers unions, which fought to keep schools closed with demands for unworkable restrictions and more money.
You can tell Buttigieg’s position is insincere, though, for a few reasons. One is that we didn’t need to “figure out a way to get schools open sooner.” States such as Florida simply opened schools, starting in the summer of 2020 and extending to a full reopening for the fall 2020 semester. We knew by the summer of 2020 that COVID-19 was less dangerous to children than the flu, and we knew by the summer of 2020 that school reopenings in Denmark and Finland did not lead to an increase in the spread of the virus. There was nothing to “figure out.”
But even with the ability of time travel, Buttigieg would not have contributed to school reopenings (which he opposed at the time) because his party answers to the beck and call of government unions. Emails show that the Biden administration’s CDC allowed teachers unions to dictate what the CDC’s guidance should be for school reopenings and masking children. Randi Weingarten, who leads the second-largest teachers union in the country, was appointed to advise a Department of Homeland Security board and was a prominent booster of Biden and his administration. She even had a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention.
BIDEN’S CABINET OF COCONSPIRATORS
Buttigieg’s education plan during the 2020 campaign was endorsed by Weingarten. He was a proud part of the administration that he repeatedly boasted was the most pro-union in history, the same administration that made school lockdown fanatic Weingarten the face of its union policies. Buttigieg supports the same policies that Biden and the state of California support, which would funnel workers into unions whether they want to be in one or not.
Buttigieg would not have done anything differently because to do so would have put him in conflict with the unions that call the shots in the Democratic Party. Teachers unions tried to extort states for more funding during the pandemic and fought against reopenings as soon as they were discussed. Buttigieg took their side then and would do so again, because the funding relationship between Democrats and teachers unions prevents Democrats from doing anything else.