August 31 2026 - 5:00pm
Most Democrats don’t want to talk about trans issues. The easiest way to avoid this politically awkward subject is denial: keep your head down, say nothing, and hope it goes away. That may explain why no trans speakers took the podium at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, after playing prominent roles at every convention since 2012.
Others insist that Republicans are drumming up controversies — about medicating gender-dysphoric children, say, or allowing them to join sports teams based on identity, rather than sex — for their own political gain: the old “wedge-issue defense”. As Texas state Representative James Talarico, who’s running for national office, said, Republicans “use those difficult issues to rile people up, to divide us, to distract us in order to win power for themselves”.
One exception is Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who has held his post for 13 years (after 37 in the House of Representatives). Markey has made trans issues a key part of his campaign in an attempt to fend off his primary challenger, Representative Seth Moulton. Markey says that Moulton “threw trans kids under the bus”.
“Trans athletes should be able to play,” Markey said last month. “That reflects Massachusetts and who we are. And Seth Moulton does not.” Markey was referring to comments Moulton made after the 2024 election, when he blamed Democrats’ defeat in part on their handling of transgender issues and said he did not want his daughters competing against “a male or formerly male athlete”.
Indeed, the remarks gave Markey an opening to cast Moulton as morally bankrupt, leaving his challenger scrambling to atone. “To the trans community feeling the weight and the pain of the Trump administration policies, I deeply recognize your trauma, and I’m sorry if my comments hurt you,” Moulton said during a debate with Markey in August. Markey, meanwhile, had turned Moulton’s earlier stance into a wedge issue, using it to drive a deeper divide between them.
One of the many odd things about watching these men compete for the title of “most obsequious” is that trans athletes in sports and the medical treatment of gender dysphoria, are largely thought of as “80-20” issues. By most accounts, a majority of Americans support dividing sports by sex and disallowing access to cross-sex hormones and sex-trait surgeries for minors. Ironically, it is Markey — not Moulton — at odds with most of the country.
Yet rather than acknowledge this, Democrats either avoid the question of whether their policies need to change or insist that any focus on trans issues is a Right-wing effort to weaken the party. What they still lack is a clear, defensible position — and the confidence to stick to it, rather than groveling when the political winds change.
A rare example comes from Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, Amy Acton. “I do not support boys playing in girls’ sports”, she said this year. Luckily for her, Ohio law already bars transgender girls and women from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams. Thus, if Acton vowed to let males self-identify into girls’ sports, she’d be promising to break her state’s own law.
This may be the pattern in elections to come. Red-state Democrats will find it easier to articulate a majority position; blue-state Democrats will still have to appease primary voters at the ideological extremes. Expect more Markey-style lean-ins in liberal states, and lean-out moderates where conservatives hold sway.
