Last week, I was having coffee with a friend who referred to the gaggle of white liberal women often surrounding Justin Wilson, the mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, as “AWFLs.” I thought she was using the word “awfuls” to describe people who abandon their principles to get power or simply to sit near it. As it turns out, I was close. Affluent, white, female liberals are, according to Democratic strategist James Carville, though not by this acronym, so annoying and repulsive that they’re driving centrist voters, particularly men, away from the Democratic Party.
Enter Jill Biden.
As President Joe Biden fights for his life metaphorically and perhaps literally, the first lady’s power and influence are becoming clearer to the public. Her appearances next to her husband lately suggest that she is something other than a supportive wife. Unless, of course, a loving wife publicly emasculates her husband, treating him like a 6-year-old after his catastrophic debate performance. As queen of the AWFLs, she projected her kindergarten teacher tone and said, “Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question, you knew all the facts.”
Meanwhile, people on both sides of the aisle found ourselves united in recognition of the truly cringeworthy moment. Many of us anticipated there would be more to follow. We were right.
On Monday, Jill Biden flashed her AWFL card again. Not often asked difficult questions from the adoring liberal media, she certainly is not adept at answering them. When a reporter asked her a reasonable question on many of our minds about how she would respond to the House Democrats who want Biden out of the race, she victimized herself.
“Why are you screaming at me?” she asked as she raised her arms, donning a designer white blazer. Then she added, “You know me. Don’t scream at me, just let me talk.”
And then she never answered the question. Instead, she climbed into an awaiting vehicle and departed. Victimizing herself before she ignored the important questions on people’s minds was a tactic to distract us. Her most ardent followers on the Left are perhaps starting to notice that she is, as they would say, “flexing her privilege” — her AWFL privilege.
And she isn’t the only one. Carville was right to note that the Democratic Party is filled with “preachy females.” Fairfax County, Virginia, is no exception. During the district’s school board meetings, the public is too often privy to preachy political stump speeches on a variety of issues from all Democratic-endorsed members, especially the vice chairwoman, Melanie Meren.
But these AWFLs do not practice what they preach.
They spend hours advocating racial justice, for example, but have elected a white chairman and vice chairwoman to the board’s leadership. Meanwhile, the white superintendent, Michelle Reid, selected and hired by the board, goes on listening tours for weeks before implementing whichever dysfunctional policy she preselected. The listening tours are meant to make parents feel like they have a say.
Despite all the preaching on the importance of transparency and inclusion among the district’s leadership, the only thing AWFLs actually care about is their social and political appearance, not loyalty to principles. They are hoping we don’t notice the disconnect and hypocrisy.
This year, for example, Reid has antidemocratically decided to implement a controversial sex education pilot program. In 14 schools, the trial program, which evaluators most likely have already deemed a success before its inception, will combine boys and girls for sexual education instruction in grades 5-8. Despite overwhelming opposition to co-ed sex education — 84% of survey respondents in the county objected — Reid is unilaterally pushing through the measure anyway.
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The lesson here is that AWFLs are power-hungry. They want those they govern to do as they say, not as they do.
The good news is that we have agency. In our democracy, these AWFLs can only have power over us if we grant it to them. And what we now seem to be hearing across the political spectrum is a collective “no.”
Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network.
