President Donald Trump was letting his political desires show too much with his insistence last week that the nation’s public schools reopen in the fall. He has threatened to withhold federal dollars if schools do not bring back students.

Trump also criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for reopening schools as too tough and expensive. The CDC said Thursday it would not be changing its guidance.

We believe governors across the country are in a much better position to make a decision for their states about how education will be conducted this fall. They are already, as in Minnesota, reviewing different scenarios involving infection rates, school facilities and safety procedures, to decide whether students would be safest staying home, going back to school, or a combination of both.

We suspect what’s behind Trump’s demand that students go back to school this fall is that’s when school normally starts and he wants things back to normal before the election in November. He wants kids back in school, their parents back to work and the economy back to booming by election day. We all do, Mr. President, but we cannot shove what we want into place and expect everything to just work out.

Trump is right that some Democrats are rooting against normal life again, at least until the election, and that they would not mind seeing school disrupted this fall because it may hurt the president. So if Trump is to be scolded for rushing things, Democrats should at least face some cynicism when they claim to only want safety first.