In the next few months, one of the crucial divides over Covid policy is likely to be within the Democratic coalition and not just between right and left. And the question of whether and when to relax school masking is likely to be a major flash point, with certain voices (in this newspaper, at The Atlantic, at NPR) already arguing for a relatively rapid exit from the policy while other forces (public health caution, bureaucratic inertia) work to sustain its extension to at least the summer. (And then if another concerning variant crops up, perhaps, to the fall and beyond …)

These conflicts have two important implications. First, they threaten an extension of the dynamics that have already created political problems for Democrats in states like Virginia and New Jersey: the alienation of inner-circle liberalism, with its advanced degrees and N95s, from swing constituencies whose attitude toward the pandemic may be more like “vaccinated and done.”

Second, they threaten an inversion of the scenario feared by conservatives: not the extension of liberalism’s power under the guise of public health but a turning inward of elite institutions and communities, their retreat into a safety-obsessed culture that’s more insular, virtually mediated and unhappier than the society that they aspire to lead.