“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.”
Democrats have been trying exactly your message for a decade, and it’s failed. They’ve tried again and again. And it’s failed again and again. Here’s what a voter actually watching a debate experiences:
Republican goes on transphobic rant.
Democrat responds with anything but a full-throated support of trans rights. They say, “we should leave it up to doctors and parents, I’m here to talk about other things.” They call it a distraction. They don’t support the bigotry, but they also do anything they can to avoid the topic.
Voters read this as a deflection. They think the Democrat is trying to avoid the issue (because they are). And since the Democrat won’t vehemently and openly support trans rights. The Republican is demonizing trans people, and the Democrat is avoiding the subject. They conclude that the Republican is probably right and that the Democrat is just afraid to offend their radical base. The Democrat is clearly ashamed of the issue, and people can smell that a mile away.
Want to know how to respond to “concerns” about trans people in bathrooms? Point out that Jim Crow was built on the “valid concerns” of white women not feeling safe sharing space with black women. Want to know how to talk about trans kids? Point out that any hand wringing about this can only come from a viewpoint that fundamentally does not view the lives of cis people and trans people as equally valuable. (The only way you can justify withholding treatment from 50 trans kids just in case one cis kid makes a mistake is if you don’t hold the lives of both in equal value.) Publicly state that of course trans people change their sex, and that it’s absurd to argue that trans women should have to use women’s restrooms. Argue that trans women belong in women sports because they’re biologically female, not because of vague platitudes about identity and validity. In other words, fully embrace trans rights and know how to actually talk about and defend them in a coherent way.
You can’t third way your out of this. Democrats have been trying for a decade. Kamala responded to transphobia not with a full-throated support for trans rights, but with a mealy-mouthed “I’ll enforce the law.”
Democrats have been arguing for a decade that this is a distraction, but that’s not how voters think. If one party constantly brings an issue up, low-information voters will assume it’s an issue worth considering. And if the other side just keeps calling it a distraction, the voters will conclude the Democrats are trying to hide something and side with the Republican. You can’t just ignore these issues. It doesn’t work. It’s been tried, and it’s failed.
What you’re missing is that Democrats HAVE NOT been talking about this. Sure, they largely haven’t been voting for transphobic bills, but their approach has been, “don’t talk about trans people publicly, but support trans people privately.” And it just hasn’t worked. Your approach isn’t novel. It’s just more of the same. In an era when authenticity matters to voters more than anything else, calling an issue a distraction is a suicidal election strategy.