Report: Democrats Are Avoiding Lockdowns Due to Fear of Being Wiped Out Politically

From New York to California, Democratic mayors and governors are fighting to keep schools and businesses open with an urgency they haven't flexed before in the pandemic.

In Chicago, where a teachers union dispute has shuttered the nation's third-largest school system, Mayor Lori Lightfoot blasted educators for not reporting to their classrooms — and got the tacit support of the White House.

"Enough is enough. We are standing firm," Lightfoot told Chicago residents last week.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti swear the Super Bowl will go on in L.A. even as Covid-19 cases surge. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has declared "the end of the medical emergency" and said unvaccinated people have themselves to blame if they get sick. Even President Joe Biden urged Americans not to cancel their holiday travel plans last month.

Democrats went further than most Republicans in shutting down businesses, enforcing social distancing and requiring masks to tame the spread of the virus — and were initially rewarded politically for their caution. But as the nation trudges into a third pandemic year in the grips of another variant-fueled wave, blue state leaders faced with exhausted and frustrated voters have lost the stomach for strict shutdowns. Those early-pandemic tactics, some argue, hurt people financially and fostered a mental health crisis among siloed school kids.

[...] Yet Democratic leaders are mindful that Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor's race in November by, in part, appealing to frustrated parents, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy came closer to defeat than most people expected and walked away citing the pandemic for the close call.

"There's a real social impact that I think has not been part of the messaging [until recently]," said Doug Rubin, a veteran strategist who has worked with several prominent Massachusetts Democrats, including former Gov. Deval Patrick, and on Tom Steyer's 2020 presidential bid. "Democrats saw there were political impacts to this. They saw in Virginia and New Jersey the potential negative impacts of ignoring some of these issues."

[...] Six in 10 Americans surveyed in a mid-December Monmouth University poll, just as the first Omicron cases emerged in the U.S., said they felt "worn out" by Covid's toll on their daily lives, including 63 percent of Democrats.

Governors in both red and blue states have watched their approval ratings sink throughout the pandemic. The Monmouth poll showed Delta dragging down Covid approval ratings for governors in states Biden won in 2020, too.

[...] Democratic leaders "see an upcoming election, they see backlashes," said Bob Blendon, a polling and political strategy expert at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "They can't close things down, and there is no public tolerance for serious disruptions in people's lives. People have run out of patience."