In Marin County, California, one of the most affluent communities in America, teachers have seen their salaries rise steadily.  Too bad, though, that inflation is increasing even more steadily.  The big question, then, is whether these teachers — most of whom are women and, at a guess, Democrats — will remain loyal to the party inflicting this pain on them.

It's a good bet, when you're contemplating public school teachers in California, that the teachers are left-leaning.  After all, in the lead-up to the 2020 election, across America, teachers' unions donated millions to Democrat candidates and causes.  Nothing has changed since then.  At a rough count, between 1990 and 2022, teachers' unions donated $90 million to Democrat causes and candidates.  In the same time frame, they donated just a few million to the Republicans.  Given that national trend, teachers in über-blue Marin are more likely than most to be leftists.

Moreover, judging by my experiences as a parent of Marin children (and the experiences of my parent friends, both Democrat and Republican), the local teachers were not afraid to bring their politics to school.  Whether it was denigrating George Bush and Donald Trump, attacking the Second Amendment, urging students to support Barack Obama, or pushing a sexual agenda in English "literature," everything mostly flowed in one direction.

It's a good question, though, whether this party loyalty will survive inflation that's eating away at teachers' wealth.  First, the good news for teachers:

The average pay for teachers in Marin County has been rising, but not as fast as the cost of living, according to state and county data.

Public school teachers in Marin were paid an average of $89,935 in 2020–21, said Mary Jane Burke, the county superintendent of schools. That was a 1.79% increase over $88,352 in 2019–20.

Statewide, the average teacher pay rose to $85,856 in the 2020-21 school year, an increase of 1.6% from 2019–20, according to new state data.

And then the bad news (emphasis mine):

By comparison, inflation rose by about 5% from May 2020 to May 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means California teachers typically saw their real wages drop.

Over the same period, typical home values in California rose by about 15%, to $657,000, according to Zillow, a real estate data company.

Every day that these teachers stand at the head of the classroom, they're becoming poorer.  That's a very real phenomenon that teachers cannot miss.  What remains to be seen is whether teachers, almost all of whom live in a bubble created by the Democrat-run media (print, TV, internet, radio, etc.), will connect what's happening to them with Biden's policies.

Image: Redwood High School, Marin County, California, by ResearcherQ.  CC BY-SA 3.0.

I'll admit that I'm not sanguine. I have a couple of teacher friends I follow on my Facebook page (friends from my long-ago high school days).  Since Biden entered office, both their accounts had the usual chronic complaints about how hard their job is, but neither mentioned either rising fuel prices or general inflation.  However, just one day after Biden blamed Putin for fuel prices and inflation, these teachers dutifully blamed Putin for...you guessed it: rising fuel prices and inflation.

In theory, reality should eventually intrude.  That is, at some point, even if they believe Putin is at the root of their financial troubles, they should expect their president to fix it, and he won't be able to.

It's certainly true that lots of Americans are getting reality checks.  According to a just released NBC poll, Hispanics without college degrees have shifted by 30 points in the direction of Republican congressional candidates.  That is a swift and staggering change and represents the direct effect of Democrat policies on their finances, personal safety, and moral values.

College-credentialed men have shown a 26-point shift to Republicans; men without degrees, who were already Republican-leaning, are leaning by 12 points more; and women without degrees have shifted from slight Democrat to slightly Republican.  These are huge changes that signal a seismic shift in political alignment across America.

Ironically, the only group that's becoming more Democrat is college-educated women.  This reflects the steady drumbeat of indoctrination to which they're vulnerable, thanks to the damaging cognitive dissonance from their being told that they're both victims (as women) and victimizers (they're mostly White).

This brings me back to those Marin teachers.  My experience (an "n" of 14 years as a parent in the district) identifies them as primarily women (mostly White), along with a lot of gay men and a few straight ones.  If they vote according to their pocketbook, maybe they'll abandon the Democrat party.  However, I suspect that they'll follow the White-college-educated-woman trend, deny reality, and double down on their leftist madness.