Sarah Cooper: “For a moment I forgot who the Secretary of Education was. Decided not to look it up. It feels so good not knowing things.”

Lauren Hough: “Holy s—. Yeah I have no f—— clue. This is nice. I like this.”

These tweets were posted on February 4, 2021. Sarah Cooper hosts the Netflix show “Everything is Fine” and is an author, and Lauren Hough is a published author and essayist. They are both, as you might infer, liberals, and the tweets above are referring to how nice it is not to care about the Secretary of Education under the Biden administration. This is in contrast to racist school voucher and former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who attracted significant criticism from liberals for her draconian school voucher policy and opposition to any meaningful public school reform, among many other misguided reforms. I’m not here to defend her; frankly, former Secretary DeVos is an idiot. However, just because Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona is a Democrat does not mean that he is not also an idiot.
This leads me to my point: ever since Biden got elected, Democrats have gotten complacent. We’ve stopped fighting for issues that matter and have focused on party unity and getting elected again over the ultimate goal of politics, which is to benefit U.S residents and the people of the world. And the point of getting elected is not to get elected again; the point is helping people. Right now, Democrats just aren’t doing enough of that.
Case in point: eight Democratic senators voted against the $15 minimum wage, which the Congressional Budget Office projects would cause a net increase of $331 billion dollars in wages by 2031. There are more children in cages at the border than there ever were during the Trump administration (estimates reach higher than 5,000); some have not been allowed to shower for days or contact their parents, their lawyers say. Americans owe $1.57 trillion dollars in student loan debt, an issue that many experts think Biden has the chance to unilaterally solve through executive order. He hasn’t. We just bombed Syria again. Despite Biden’s campaign promise in 2008 to close Guantanamo Bay and multiple new accounts of psychological and physical abuse, it remains open. There’s even a new movie about it called “The Mauritanian.” North Korea has basically stopped responding to our late-night texts.
I am not saying that President Biden is doing a poor job. He has focused much of his energy on ending the pandemic, and there seems to be an end in sight. He has rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, signed multiple bills to foster ending racial discrimination, and even been the most vocal pro-union president since the ‘60s. What I am saying is just because Democrats are in office does not mean that we can stop holding them accountable for their actions (and their inaction). A civil society only functions correctly if citizens are invested all the time, not just when the president is someone you hate.
Since I’m writing for a Luther audience, a majority of my readers are probably liberal. I implore you (and conservatives) to continue to hold the Biden administration accountable. There is always more important work to do, and it will not get done if we don’t call upon our leaders to do it. This is not the time to get lazy.

Opinions expressed in columns and letters are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Chips or organizations with which the author(s) are associated.