It came all the way down to the wire. The unions and their pet politicians threw everything they had into the fight. But then Pence broke the tie. Senator Sessions was also available to cast his vote.
The betrayal by Murkowski and Collins, who put the unions ahead of America's children, didn't help. But there is no doubt that the politicians who voted against DeVos will come calling on the unions when election time comes around. And that the money used to pay the politicians who did their job fighting to prevent school choice will come out of the pockets of taxpayers and out of education budgets.
Effectively we have politicians claiming to care about children who are soliciting donations at their expense. But that's the usual way that the left does things.
The controversy over DeVos though does show how the unions once again dominate Dem politics. In past years we had seen increased openness among Democrats to charter schools and other common sense educational reform options. But that openness did not last. The unions and their radical left wing allies did everything possible to destroy progressive reform advocates.
And they got their way.
Policies that even Obama once backed have been thoroughly demonized. But that is true of a whole range of positions. And it shows all too well the descent into extremism on the left.
But what is important now is that the Department of Education be de-radicalized. That means taking on a lot of the Obama era Dear Colleague letters which pushed schools into adopting abusive, dangerous and unreasonable policies. We need education reform. But reform also begins with ending the abuses of the system.