Party of COVID-19 Authoritarianism Improbably Rebrands as 'Party of Freedom'

Democrats campaigning both on their pandemic record and minding your own damn business: Pick one.

For a while there last night, it looked like variations on the word joy had a puncher's chance of outnumbering references to freedom at the relentlessly message-disciplined day three of the Democratic National Convention.

When onetime party rising star Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) informed us about one-third of the way through that "tonight is about joy" and "achieving the impossible that should bring us joy," and that "our nominees, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, they bring the joy," the (unofficial) joy vs. freedom count stood at a respectable 21–32.

But then Pennsylvania governor, veep pick runner-up, and professional Barack Obama impersonator Josh Shapiro ladled out the freedom thicker than a 1980s direct response television commercial.

"We are the party of real freedom," Shapiro (or as former President Donald Trump calls him, "the highly overrated Jewish Governor") assured Democrats. "That's right, the kind of real freedom that comes when that child has a great public school with an awesome teacher, because we believe in her future. Real freedom, real freedom that comes when we invest in the police and in the community so that child can walk to and from school and get home safely to her mama. Real freedom, real freedom that comes when she can join a union, marry who she loves, start a family on her own terms, breathe clean air, drink pure water, worship how she wants, and live a life of purpose where she is respected for who she is. Real freedom. Real freedom comes when she can look at madam president and know that this is a nation where anything and everything is possible. That is real freedom, and that is what we are fighting for."

By the time Pastor (and Chicago Alderman) William Hall in his benediction prayed that "God, we are ready to fight for freedoms," the Democrats' new favorite F-word had won the contest in a rout, 94–35.

One of the reasons Shapiro had made for an attractive vice presidential selection over last night's featured speaker Tim Walz was that, unlike the Minnesota governor, he was not in office during the critical, life-and-death pandemic policy-making era of 2020–2022. Thus making all his freedom talk less deserving of a laugh track. Or vuvuzela.

Walz during his 18-minute speech wisely did not bring up his controversial record on COVID-19: the school closures, the indoor (and some outdoor) mask mandates, the unsupported-by-science outdoor dining bans, the jailing of defiantly open bar owners, the state of emergency that lasted 474 days, the misspent relief funds, the state tipline for ratting out Minnesotans for gathering in overly large numbers by a lake.

"You never learn anything about anybody when times are easy," Maryland Gov. Wes Moore declared last night. "You learn everything you need to know about somebody when times are hard and when the temperature gets turned up."

Judging by Moore's standard, we have learned that Walz will drop that "freedom" pose like a lump of burning coal when the going gets rough. In November 2020, months after Republican governors such as Florida's Ron DeSantis had lifted most restrictions and opened up all K-12 schools, Walz took what even the restriction-friendly New York Times characterized as "the extraordinary step of banning people from different households from meeting indoors or outdoors, even though evidence has consistently shown the outdoors to be relatively safe."

"This prohibition includes indoor and outdoor gatherings, planned and spontaneous gatherings, and public and private gatherings," Walz declared at the time, applying the order to groups of any size, "even if social distancing can be maintained."

With that dystopian record on your resume, it takes a Lake Minnetonka–sized reservoir of shamelessness to proclaim, as Walz did last night, that "when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love, freedom to make your own health care decisions…[and] freedom to live the life that you want to lead."

Making your own health care decision to gather outdoors with the people you love is a freedom as fundamental as it gets. And Walz criminalized it.

When not staying mum about those bad old days, Democrats this week have gone on offense, campaigning brazenly about the virtues of their COVID-19 record.

President Joe Biden, Bill Clinton claimed omnipotently last night, "healed our sick and put the rest of us back to work." On opening night, Rep. Lauren Underwood (D–Ill.) asserted simply that "Donald Trump failed us, but Joe Biden and Kamala Harris got it under control." (Trump certainly behaved erratically, especially in the information-starved first three months of the pandemic, but he did kickstart Operation Warp Speed, which produced vaccines much faster than Biden thought possible.)

"Thanks to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris," Rep. James Clyburn (D–S.C.) said Monday, in a formulation repeated by many, "we reopened our schools, brought back our businesses, and restored our faith in the American can-do spirit."

This is risible revisionism. Schools in Republican-governed states were largely open by the time Biden took office; schools in Democratic polities (particularly big city districts dominated by teachers unions) were largely closed. Biden's contribution to the reopening process was to slow it down, by inviting union "stakeholders" to unscientifically influence the ballyhooed new pandemic school guidelines unveiled by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in February 2021, sentencing CDC-compliant schools to still more academically/socially disastrous remote learning.

That guidance, after howls of protests by actual scientists, was revised five weeks later, coincidentally just days after public schools received a generational jolt of $122 billion from a federal government that typically spends around $40 billion a year on K-12 education. Yet those Democrat-dominated school districts still kept dragging their feet.

As I pointed out when Democrats were launching another round of school-opening revisionism one year ago:

You can understand why Joe Biden wants to falsely portray himself as a champion of reopening, just as you can see why—of all people—so does Randi Weingarten: Extended school closures, long after the survey data and global experience argued convincingly against them, constituted one of the most egregious public policy failures in modern American history, the aftereffects of which are still massively reshaping American kids, families, education systems, and cities. They are deservedly unpopular, with few people beyond opinion-journalism trolls still attempting to defend them.

What Biden delivered was not school reopening but a gargantuan transfer of federal tax money to local school districts right as their customer base was running away screaming, especially in cities and states that closed schools most.

Don't believe the cranky libertarians? Let's consult The New York Times. This March, 16 months after Walz snapped at a reporter who dared question Minnesotans' learning loss under his watch, the paper of record published a brutal analysis.

"Today, there is broad acknowledgment among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting," the Times reported. "As experts plan for the next public health emergency, whatever it may be, a growing body of research shows that pandemic school closures came at a steep cost to students."

A presidential campaign, as Clinton put it last night, is an extended job interview. Who has the judgment and temperament to keep a cool hand on the reins of power during the next emergency? Democrats, and Walz in particular, demonstrated during COVID-19 that not only do they lack sound public health judgment, but that when the chips are down they will sacrifice precisely the fundamental American virtue they have branded themselves as defending this week: your freedom.