Most Americans Are Moving On from Covid. Progressive Elites Aren’t By Nate Hochman
Notably, it’s Democrats who are reporting the largest shift in views toward the pandemic. According to recent numbers from Morning Consult, “the share of adults who say COVID-19 is a severe health risk in their local community fell to an all-time low of 17%, driven by a roughly 20-point decrease among Democrats in recent weeks. Just under a quarter of Democrats now say COVID-19 is a severe local risk, compared with 12% of Republicans, a level that has also fallen since late January.” From January 14 to March 13, the share of American adults who see Covid as a “severe” health risk fell 17 points, from 34 to 17 percent. Among Republicans, that number fell 11 points, from 23 to 12 percent. But among Democrats over that time period, it fell 23 points, from 46 to 23.
If you get your news from the New York Times, you could be forgiven for not knowing any of this. Here’s a sampling of headlines from the nation’s paper of record over the last week:
With a Flurry of High-Profile Coronavirus Cases, Washington Is Again on Edge
For Some Teens, as Masks Come Off, Anxiety Sets In
As Offices Open and Mask Mandates Drop, Some Anxieties Set In
Another Covid Surge May Be Coming. Are We Ready for It? (“We’ve been wearing rose-colored glasses instead of correcting our vision,” one scientist said.)
‘I Still Just Worry’: 3 Teachers on Covid’s Long Shadow Over American Schools
Could the U.S. See Another Covid Wave? (Cases are increasing in China and Europe. Is the United States ready for another surge?)
The disconnect between New York Times writers and the country writ large isn’t surprising. Young, upwardly mobile, college-educated progressives — the cultural and political milieu that most elite journalists come from — have consistently polled as the most Covid-hawkish demographic in America. But that cohort is increasingly out of touch with the national mood. As the rest of the country — including a growing number of Democrats — moves to return to normal, elite progressives aren’t moving with them.
The progressive wing of the Democratic Party, consisting of Americans who identify as “liberal” or “very liberal,” is one of the most educated political groups in the country (if, by “educated,” one means having academic degrees). It’s also the youngest, whitest, and most politically engaged segment of its party: According to a November 2021 Pew report, 71 percent of the “Progressive Left” are younger than 50, 68 percent are white non-Hispanic, and the demographic as a whole “donated money to campaigns in 2020 at a higher rate than any other Democratic-oriented group.” (Notably, “the three other Democratic-oriented groups” in the Pew taxonomy — Establishment Liberals, Democratic Mainstays, and Outsider Left — were “no more than about half White non-Hispanic”).
Members of the group tend to be “particularly likely to get political news from NPR and The New York Times in a typical week,” Pew noted. And they “have been particularly cautious when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic: In late August, 79 percent reported wearing a mask all or most of the time when in stores and other businesses. And, [in] that same period, 94 percent said they had received all of the required shots to be fully vaccinated — the highest share of any group.”
That ideological divide has been exacerbated across the spectrum by the recent shift in American pandemic opinion. But now, it’s widening within the Democratic Party itself. “Americans who identify as ‘very liberal’ are much more worried about Covid than Americans who identify as ‘somewhat liberal’ or ‘liberal,’” David Leonhardt wrote last week. “Increasingly, the very liberal look like outliers on Covid: The merely liberal are sometimes closer to moderates than to the very liberal.” Leonhardt notes that “Democrats younger than 45 are more likely to say the virus poses a great risk to them than those older than 65 are — which is inconsistent with scientific reality but consistent with younger Democrats’ more intense liberalism.” In addition, “nearly 50 percent of very liberal Americans say that they believe Covid presents a ‘great risk’ to their personal health,” whereas “other liberals, moderates and conservatives tend to be less worried.” And “more than 60 percent of very liberal Americans believe that mask mandates should continue for the foreseeable future,” whereas “most moderates and conservatives see mandates as a temporary strategy that should end this year.”
The problem is, by virtue of their cultural and political bubble, many elite Times readers and writers continue to assume that Americans share their views on Covid. That’s driving an increasingly out-of-touch tone on the virus, as evidenced in this section from a Times explainer last week:
A mask will probably live in your pocket forever.
Mask-wearing, though popular in many countries around the world before the pandemic, especially where pollution is severe, was always regarded with suspicion in the United States — a sign of indulging unnecessary paranoia. Though masks became the subject of a lot of defiance in many states during the past two years, New Yorkers embraced them. Compliance with wearing masks on subways remains remarkable.
We have also learned that they have multiple uses — as face warmers, as shields against unpleasant street smells, as concealers of skin problems and, for women, as armor against men who pass you by on the street ordering you to “smile.” Their use is now normalized, and we’ll pull them out of the drawer every flu season.
Of course, mask use hasn’t been normalized. In fact, things are rapidly moving in the opposite direction. According to the Morning Consult poll I cited earlier — published two days before this column — the number of Americans who are regularly masking is dropping precipitously. As of March 16, just two in five Americans said they “‘always’ mask up.” Those numbers were “down 3 points from last week and the lowest the share has been since tracking began early last year,” Morning Consult wrote. “That share has dropped 20 points since a mid-January survey.” And it’s reflected in substantive policy, too: As of March 21, Burbio’s School Mask Policy Tracker showed that 92 percent of school districts nationwide no longer require masks. That’s a full 56.8 point drop from February 4, when just 35.2 percent of school districts didn’t require masks. Again, that shift has been driven by deep-blue areas, which have tended to hold on to mask mandates much longer than their more conservative counterparts.
The Times writes that masking “is now normalized, and we’ll pull them out of the drawer every flu season.” But who is the “we” in this context? It’s not the average American. In all likelihood, it’s not even the average Democrat. In “The Right Stuff,” a 1996 essay defending populist conservatism, Irving Kristol noted that “classical political thought was wary of democracy because it saw the people as fickle, envious and inherently turbulent.” But, he wrote, “they had no knowledge of democracies where the people were conservative and the educated elites that governed them were ideological, always busy provoking disorder and discontent in the name of some utopian goal.” Our country has been blessed with a citizenry that is far more prudent and reasonable than the progressive elite at the head of our civic institutions. Thank goodness for that.
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