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鈥淚t鈥檚 the teachers unions, stupid.鈥�

That line may sound like a crude throwback to James Carville鈥檚 famous Clinton-era mantra, but it captures a meaningful dilemma inside the Democratic Party鈥檚 current approach to education.

Since the party鈥檚 defeat in 2024, several Democrats have urged a return to the Obama-era emphasis on accountability for student outcomes, arguing that Democrats have ceded the education issue to Republicans and, in the process, squandered a longstanding advantage.

鈥淚n education, you need 鈥� accountability,鈥� former Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan argued recently. 鈥淸Our side isn鈥檛 offering that]. We鈥檙e adrift, it鈥檚 killing us politically, and it鈥檚 killing our kids.鈥�

Meanwhile, former Providence, Rhode Island, mayor Jorge Elorza and Democratic education activist Ben Austin say that their party has become too deferential to teachers unions. Democrats must 鈥渁dopt an abundance mindset鈥� and stop allowing organized interests to dictate the party鈥檚 agenda, so that 鈥渨hen families and special interests want different things鈥� there should be no doubt about whose side Democrats are on.鈥� Elorza and Duncan blue-state governors to participate in the new federal school choice tax credit in President Trump鈥檚 One Big Beautiful Bill.

Finally, in the Wall Street Journal last fall, former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel chided his union critics while touting the academic gains made on his watch. 鈥淭he teachers union brass disagreed with my approach in Chicago,鈥� Emanuel wrote. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 fine 鈥� the results speak for themselves.鈥�

The fundamental challenge for these Democrats, however, is that the electorate they hope to persuade has changed. Put simply, today鈥檚 Democratic voters are much closer to the very interest groups these reformers hope to confront.

Combining and survey data stretching back to the 1990s, I find that Democratic voters have become wildly more supportive of teachers unions over the past decade. Relying on three decades鈥� worth of near-identical survey about teachers unions, I plotted net favorability toward these unions by party and year, calculated as the share of survey respondents expressing positive views toward unions minus the share expressing negative views.

Several patterns stand out.

First, Republican attitudes toward teachers unions have remained remarkably stable over time. Republicans were net negative toward unions in the mid-1990s, remained net negative throughout the Obama years, and are similarly negative today. The story here is not one of Republicans suddenly turning against teachers unions.

Second, Democratic support for teachers unions rose steadily during the first Trump administration before accelerating sharply after the pandemic. Democratic favorability climbed steadily during Trump鈥檚 first term, rising from roughly +15 in 2015 to nearly +40 by 2020. After the pandemic, however, Democratic support for teachers unions exploded upward again, peaking above +60 by 2023. 

Third, Democratic voters were once far more ambivalent about teachers unions than today鈥檚 politics might suggest. During the Obama years, their net favorability hovered in the low teens 鈥� almost identical to where Democratic opinion stood in 1996, even as GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole made the unions a of his campaign attacks. In other words, the Obama-era was not a historical anomaly but followed a period when many Democratic voters still held mixed views about teachers unions.

Taken together, these political trends create several major obstacles for Democrats hoping to the Obama-era reform agenda.

First, many Democratic voters now appear to view teachers unions not simply as education interest groups or mere political allies, but as progressive bulwarks against Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

Over the past decade, some teachers unions have expanded their political agenda well beyond traditional workplace concerns like compensation or class size. From immigration enforcement and racial justice campaigns to anti-Trump mobilization and 鈥渃ommon-good bargaining,鈥� they have increasingly positioned themselves as key actors within the party鈥檚 progressive coalition. And this approach has been popular with Democratic voters.

It is also quite visible in one of the nation鈥檚 largest teacher-union affiliates, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). I recently more than 350 CTU social-media posts published this year on X. Roughly one in five focused on Donald Trump or immigration enforcement. Not a single post addressed improving student academic achievement.

Second, the Democrats most actively engaged in education politics are also the Democrats most supportive of teachers unions. Four of the 18 surveys that I analyzed asked respondents if they voted in their most recent school board election, allowing me to examine how Democratic voters who participate in these low-turnout elections feel about teachers unions. Among Democrats who report voting in school board elections, favorable views of teachers unions rose from roughly two-in-five voters in 2009 to more than three-in-five in 2018 and approximately four-in-five by 2023鈥�24. 

Finally, the political alignment between Democratic voters and teachers unions appears strongest in the nation鈥檚 deepest-blue locales, precisely the places where Democratic education policy is most likely to be shaped. For example, last month a new found that 83% of California Democrats approve of teachers unions (a 70% net favorable rating). A recent exception came in Virginia, a more moderate state where Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger vetoed a collective bargaining bill favored by the teachers union.

Veteran education advisor Andy Rotherham recently that school reform has historically succeeded only when it wasn鈥檛 coded purely in red-versus-blue. Education politics, he argues, traditionally resembled 鈥渃onsumer versus producer鈥� politics more than conventional ideological conflict: parents and students on one side, school systems and unions on the other. 

Rotherham is surely right that education politics have become increasingly . Yet the data suggest the shift has been far more asymmetric than a simple story of partisan sorting would predict. Republican attitudes toward teachers unions changed relatively little over time. The major shift occurred among Democrats, whose support for unions surged during the Trump years and accelerated further after the pandemic. 

In other words, teachers unions did not merely become caught in partisan crossfire. They became more deeply integrated into the institutional identity of the Democratic Party itself.

That dynamic also extends far beyond education. Writers such as , , and legal scholar have each argued that Democrats increasingly struggle to reconcile an 鈥渁bundance鈥� politics focused on building and institutional effectiveness with a coalition deeply intertwined with organized producer interests, particularly in the public sector. 

Education may be one of the clearest examples of that broader tension. Reform-minded Democrats that the party should care less about the governance model of a school and more about whether students are actually learning. But that shift is politically difficult when the most powerful education interest group inside the Democratic coalition enjoys record levels of support among Democratic voters.

During the Obama years, Democrats could plausibly balance support for organized labor with a reform agenda centered on accountability and school performance. Today, that balancing act looks far more difficult. Teachers unions are no longer merely one stakeholder among many inside the Democratic coalition. For many Democrats, they have become symbolic defenders of the broader progressive project itself.

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