The Moms Are Awake: The Democrats Have a Big California Mom Problem

By Elizabeth Barcohana, Los Angeles -- Before 2020, I was just a voter.  I paid attention, but I was never active in politics.  I had two very young kids and an infant; like most young mothers, I was busy raising them, getting a healthy dinner on the table every night, and keeping up with homework, activities, carpool, and our social life in our tight-knit Jewish community in Los Angeles.  I didn’t have time for politics. In 2020, I finally realized that while I was too busy to put up a fight, like it or not, the politics was coming for my kids.  

People like Gavin Newsom, Anthony Fauci, and Randi Weingarten – people who I wouldn’t trust with my kids for 5 seconds – were making critical decisions for my children.  They usurped my and my husband’s rights and decided for us that my kindergartener could not learn in school, my two-year-old had to wear dirty masks 8 hours a day, and all of my kids over 6 months old should be force-vaccinated with an experimental drug they did not need and which did not work.  All without any evidence to support these orders.  And when mothers like me objected, we were censored by Big Tech, shamed by our communities, and labeled domestic terrorists by the Biden Administration. 

 It was 1984 in real life, and a shocking awakening to how far government overreach could go and how easily people you respect and love would go along with it with a straight face. I apologized publicly to all the mothers who I had harshly judged in 2015 for fighting against California eliminating the personal belief exemption for school-mandated vaccinations. 

 “I am sorry,” I told them, “my first child was only a baby at the time.  I did not understand back then.  I am here now.  Please forgive me.” Graciously, they did. 

It wasn’t only COVID lockdowns and mandates that were tearing at the fabric of our communities during my most pivotal years of motherhood.  Riots justified as reparations, guilt for privilege earned by merit, and rampant antisemitism were exposing my young children to a hatred and division I had only heard about from my Jewish grandparents but had never experienced myself.  

It is now everywhere: from prestigious preschools to elite universities, from our bathrooms to the football field, in our local and national businesses, and in the stump speeches of politicians essentially running against the basic tenets of American exceptionalism, which up until very recently was held up as the highest ideal throughout the globe. These problems are not only esoteric ideas to normal mothers like they are for the elite. They are real and affect us in our everyday lives. 

How many of us allow our children to play in the street unattended like we used to do when we were kids?  How many times have you seen a safety video come up on your social media feed to offer tips on how to load the groceries in your car or buckle your toddler’s carseat without getting mugged from behind?  How many of us became first time gun owners?  How often do you scan your surroundings for drugged-out vagrants and teach your kids to notice and keep their distance?  This is not normal for children or acceptable for mothers.  We did not grow up this way. Why are we raising our kids like this?  My patriotic, Jewish maternal instincts left me no choice but to rise up and fight back.  

It was an uncontrollable drive I had never experienced before; one I can only describe as a calling. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I wasn’t alone – even in solid blue Los Angeles.  A whole new coalition of very diverse mothers and fathers started to form across the country, made up of parents all along the spectrum (and even some who had never paid attention to politics or voted before in their lives).  We were united over the one thing that mattered most to us: the best interests of our kids – America’s future.  Our bond was resilient and durable. Or, so I thought. 

The first cracks in the Parent Coalition appeared in 2022, when we realized that Donald Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis were going to run against each other for the Republican Presidential nomination.  It was like taking sides in a divorce.  The disillusioned Democrat wing of the Parent Coalition wanted DeSantis because he stood up to Fauci and was taking on wokeness and Trump wasn’t distancing himself from Operation Warp Speed enough; most of us in the Right Wing could see it had to be Trump (especially when the indictments started coming down).  

We argued but I told myself at least new voters were open to voting for a Republican for the first time.  That was exciting. Things really fell apart when DeSantis signed a heartbeat bill in 2023, limiting abortion after the baby’s heartbeat could be detected.  Most of the former Democrat moms could not abide a first trimester abortion ban and they abandoned him. (Not all did – some of them came to their senses and realized aborting hypothetical children is NOT a priority over your actual children.)  Some of them came around to Trump, who is closer to the Center on abortion and disagrees with heartbeat bills.  The rest turned to RFK, Jr., who declared his candidacy right around the same time. 

 I was really nervous that America’s mothers were not going to pull through to hold anyone accountable at the ballot box in 2024. October 7th was, I thought, the final nail in the coffin of the Parent Coalition.  The antisemitism everywhere was off the charts; the anti-(((globalists))) wing of the Parent Coalition who had not the first clue about the Middle East and foreign policy was astonishingly believing Palestinian propaganda and taking the side of terrorists who used their own children as human shields; and Jewish parents had a new issue in the schools to deal with that was taking priority over everything else.  This time we didn’t argue, we just stopped talking to each other.  Again, more parents were turning to RFK Jr., simply because he was an anti-war, third-party option (and yet his support for Israel is unwavering). 

I cannot overstate how grateful I am to RFK Jr. for putting differences aside and choosing to unite behind President Trump.  These two men modeled for everyone who disagrees about particular political issues that nothing else matters if we do not come together to save America first.  America’s parents have no one else to turn to, now, but each other.  Under the leadership of President Trump with RJK Jr. at his side putting children’s health in the national spotlight, I can see that the cracks are already beginning to heal and the Parent Coalition will do what we always did: put our children first, and fight like hell for their future by putting Donald J. Trump in the White House in November.