“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.”
Agreed, to do otherwise is allowing them to choose the battlefield. The thing to remember is that the conservative voting base only emphasizes with what harms their own in-groups. You can bring the best facts to the table on other topics and their base will just shrug and move into the next shiny grievance / moral panic that they’re being fed.
Whenever you have an opening to cut their legs out from under them on an issue their own voters are unhappy about, you put it on blast. Every time.