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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DH and I both voted for White but I was really on the fence and almost changed to Bowser last second. We are white and MC but live in a heavily gentrifying neighborhood with lots of UMC folks.

I don’t love Bowser and think she’s a pretty typical cynical, special-interest focused politician. But unlike White and many of his supporters, Bowser did actually seem to think that closing schools for an entire year, even after teachers had received priority vaccination and Covid rates were low, was a bad thing. Like Bowser at least seemed to get that closing schools for so long would have a horrible impact, especially on kids who are at high risk, and lead to increased hunger, drop out rates, and criminality among many DCPS students. And it did, and continues to have repercussions in the city, and most people seem not to care at all, which is very confusing to me. We’ve seen an increase in violent crime committed by teenagers and people argue about it but very few seem to remember “oh these kids were largely left to their own devices for months on end and many simply stopped going to school at all and this is an unsurprising outcome of that.” At least Bowser TRIED to get schools open again. I seriously cannot believe how little city progressives seem to care about this. You know what serves as a violence interruptor so fewer kids wind up in the criminal justice system? School! But whatever I guess.

Ultimately, though, Bowser failed to mobilize the DC constituencies that understood this, and failed to adequately convince teachers and reluctant parents (by making concessions on WTU demands and virtual options) and that’s on her. So I voted against her. But I’m not disappointed White lost, since he doesn’t seem to even see a problem with what happened.

I mostly feel like I live in some upside down world where we all make progressive sounds with our mouths but then support policies that are terrible for poor people and black people and families for… reasons. [/quote]

You realize that White wanted to keep schools closed for LONGER? How did your vote make any sense?[/quote]

Yes, I'm aware. I was really torn. My vote for White was largely a vote for change -- I don't love the idea of Bowser in office for 12 years, and I don't actually trust her to DO much the next four years. I was really irritated with my choices. Schools was the major reason I wanted to vote for Bowser. I felt like White was a question mark. It sucked.

In the end, I felt 100% confident Bowser would win re-election, and I was positive Mendo would too. So I voted White/Palmer largely to send a message that they have become too complacent.

If White and Palmer had both one, I would have been okay with it. I think ultimately White would be more pragmatic than the way he ran (he was even walking back some of his more progressive statements in the last weeks of the campaign) and I think Palmer would wind up get pushed around by the much more experienced members of the council anyway.

It's irritating to have to choose between cynical careerists and pie-eyed idealists. I want pragmatic leadership. I felt that was Bowser and Mendo 4 years ago, I don't feel as much that way now.

I do think the people flipping out about Bowser and Mendo winning are hilarious. They honestly think that if we could just get more progressive people in office, we could fix all of DC's many problems. They either haven't lived in DC very long or are just dumb.

Anyway, I wish I'd had a Fenty-esque candidate to vote for, but I didn't.[/quote]

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