Democrats finally abandoned their support for strict mask mandates just in time for President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on Tuesday. It wasn't because "the science has changed," as some so-called experts argued, but rather because Democratic politicians looked at their poll numbers heading into the midterm elections and realized that voters were rightly annoyed by all the prominent Democrats flaunting their maskless faces in the presence of masked children.
Nevertheless, elected Democrats continue to behave as though the rules do not apply to them. For example, ordinary Americans are still forced to wear masks on airplanes and other forms of public transportation. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has described wearing masks on planes as a "matter of respect," but some members of his party don't appear to have gotten the message. The Washington Free Beacon has obtained photos of two top Democrats flying the friendly skies without their masks in blatant defiance of federal guidelines.
Rep. Robin Kelly (D., Ill.), who serves as chairwoman of the Illinois Democratic Party, was spotted napping on a plane Thursday with her mask pulled down around her chin. Kelly, a longtime proponent of mask mandates, scolded a group of maskless Republican lawmakers for "putting us and our staff at risk."
Another photo obtained by the Free Beacon shows Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) on a flight without a mask earlier this week. Warnock has also been a strong advocate of mask mandates, although he recently released a campaign ad highlighting his constituents' desire to "get back to normal"—none of the people who appear in the ad are wearing masks.
On Thursday, Warnock and 46 other Senate Democrats voted "no" on a measure to end the national emergency declared by then-president Donald Trump in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats may have decided to scrap mask mandates in an effort to avoid electoral disaster in November, but many of them continue to fetishize masks in a manner that suggests they are mentally unwell.
Journalists and other Democrats, for example, absolutely lost their minds earlier this week when Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) told a group of high schools students at a press conference that they didn't have to wear masks, but could if they wanted to. The Washington Post reported that DeSantis had "mocked kids for wearing masks."