“Democrats should be focusing on Trump’s tanked economy and our diminished standing on the world stage,” said Jeremy Comeau, president of the National Federation of Stonewall Democrats. “People are being hammered by the cost of living, and we have a president who’d rather rename a gulf like some deranged cartographer than deal with the realities of the world. Democrats should be running on that every single day.
“Instead, some candidates think the way to look moderate is to take a swing at trans people first. That’s not moderate; that’s just careless, and it’s not what’s going to win this election.”
I hate it, but I’m not sure that’s true. A part of me always wonders how much of the Red Team’s anti-LGBT shouting happens because there was a subset of them who are dogmatically hateful of minorities of basically any type, which the Blue Team then used in smear tactics to generate negative partisanship because America is, in theory, supposed to be against discrimination against minorities, but by making the issue more prominent, the Blue Team may have forced the issue to polarize into something for the Red Team either to fully ignore, as they do with other inconveniently ugly elements of their support base, or turn into a central pillar, and they decided to centralize it, turning what was a quiet minority hate, bad but limited in scope, into almost industrial scale hatemongery powered by politically aligned media systems. It seems worryingly plausible that by creating a political codification of trans-ness, it took anti-trans hate from being caused by religious delusions and turned it into a way to ‘be a good American’ for a much larger audience. When you also consider how the Dems don’t really change much of anything when they do ‘stand against’ anything because they seem mostly to do it for the looks rather than real support, I have to wonder if turning trans people into a rallying flag will just lead to more trans people being attacked, legally and illegally.
See that’s the thing: they never did.
The GOP and their propagandists (paid and otherwise) were always the ones obsessing about trans people.
Apart from some performative slogans and comparatively meek mutterings that basically amounts to “I can see what you mean, but there’s no need to be cruel about it”, the DNC have all but abandoned trans people in favor of trying to find a logical and fair middle ground with bigots who don’t care about logic or fairness.
THAT’S why it’s a losing issue for them: the bigots lie about them being “gender extremists” (🙄) for not vilifying trans people, and their answer is just “this but a little less? Please?”
If they DID wholeheartedly support trans people at every turn and refused to play into the objectively false narratives ar all, it would be a winning issue, but that would require the ideological and moral backbone they sold to their owner donors long ago.
I’m also not sure it would be a winning issue. There are a lot of liberal voters who simultaneously can be relied upon for negative partisanship against anti-trans rhetoric and violence because they don’t like obvious bigotry but would, if asked, not really understand/support trans people. Most people can get behind live and let live, even many of the people who support Red team/are anti-blue team, but actual pressure to support trans people, not just accept them but look for ways to support them beyond a freedom from violence, is much rarer and more lacklustre.
There’s a simple answer. Don’t waste precious breath, simply tell the truth, I stand for the rights of trans people like I stand for the rights of every citizen. Trans rights are human rights. Also, this is a distraction, this is not a national panic, there’s not very many of them, they have always been here, they will continue to be here and they’re no more of a threat today, tomorrow, or the next day than they were 100 years ago, so I’m not getting dragged into rage bait, and if they push the issue, asked and answered.
You don’t need to expound expansively on it, and the more you do, the more likely you are to be playing to a niche subset of a niche subset anyway. A simple “That’s a gross way to frame that, and also bait” is usually sufficient. We don’t need to abandon “Trans issues” we just need make it clear, they’re scaring themselves with ghost stories and a handful of spectacularly rare problems, and if they keep whipping themselves into a frenzy, it won’t be long until they’re beating women to death to find out if she has the right parts inside.
This is the same failed strategy Democrats have been trying for a decade.
Nope. Trying to compromise with bigoted lunacy is the failed strategy the Dem leadership has been trying for SEVERAL decades.
People need to work on the their reading comprehension. The failed strategy is the idea that we can shy away from trans rights and try to portray it as a distraction. GreenBeards comment is not describing anything new. They’re describing the very strategy Democrats have been using for a decade at this point. They’re too cowardly to come out and fully defend and support trans people, and they try to third way it.
I don’t know how to explain to you, we are not throwing trans people under the bus. Period. If you can’t win without a scapegoat, then you don’t deserve to win. If this is to end in fire, we will all burn together and you’re coming down with us.
You tried to throw Palestine under the bus and created this. Do it again and you will lose worse. Grow a spine and stand for something. Democrats are failing because no one trusts them. So earn some goddamn trust and quit looking for the next minority you can sacrifice.
You have very poor reading comprehension.
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