I think so. Surely other nominees, such as Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson, were a much bigger threat to the progressive agenda than DeVos.
At Education Week’s Politics K-12 blog, Andrew Ujifusa asks whether Democrats wasted too much time, money, and political capital on the effort to defeat DeVos when other nominations appeared to pose a larger threat.
While some liberals regretted not attacking other nominees with equal force, they still insist that DeVos was super awful enough to warrant a hearty smear campaign.