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November 22, 2024 - 8:00pm
The New York Times reported this week on a conflict within the Democratic party over the role trans issues played in Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss, and whether Democrats need to change their stance on these issues in order to win over voters in the future.
According to AdImpact, the Trump campaign spent more than $37 million on television ads featuring trans issues. A 30-second spot that included a clip of Harris voicing her support for sex reassignment surgeries for prisoners and undocumented immigrants and concluded with the tagline, “Kamala is for they/them —President Trump is for you,” was particularly devastating to Harris’ prospects.
The New York Times previously reported that party leaders urged the Harris campaign to respond, with former President Bill Clinton going so far as to tell an associate that “[w]e have to answer it and say we won’t do it.” But the Harris campaign was either unable or unwilling to do that. (The campaign reportedly tested — and canned — direct responses to Trump’s attacks that only alienated voters further.)
Ultimately, Harris failed to disavow or defend her party’s unpopular positions on trans issues, substituting an uncomfortable silence for meaningful dialogue. But the issue isn’t going away. Republicans will continue to force the issue and voters will continue to care, no matter how strenuously Democratic strategists insist they shouldn’t.
After Trump’s win, the Democratic party’s back-room conflict over trans issues broke out into the open. Some Democrats clearly hope to moderate on trans issues. Representative Tom Suozzi of New York said he “d[id]n’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.” Massachusetts representative Seth Moulton criticised his party for “spend[ing] way too much time trying not to offend anyone” and said he didn’t want his two young daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.” Moulton will likely face a primary challenge for daring to dissent.
Despite claims to the contrary, trans issues do not merely affect a tiny sliver of the population. Any strategist who says otherwise fundamentally misunderstands the problem. The Biden administration’s efforts to redefine sex under Title IX distort reality to the disadvantage of people formerly recognised as female. Another example was the White House’s decision to celebrate Rachel Levine as the “first 4-star female officer in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps,” or Ketanji Brown Jackson’s refusal (“I am not a biologist”) to define the word woman during her Supreme Court nomination hearings. Despite Harris’ attempts to run and win on abortion, voters must be forgiven for doubting whether a party that can’t define women is in any position to defend women’s rights.
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SubscribeThis issue is driving away Democratic women, especially mothers. They are angry about the social contagion of trans ideology among young women, the gaslighting of people who insist that biological sex matters in sports, and the censorship of anyone who objects. It has to stop.
It’s already barbarous to mutilate the healthy sex organs and breasts of adults. To do it to children, who can’t even consent to have their ear pierced, is monstrous. The parents and doctors who have done this are criminals.
Gender doesn’t exist, sex does. And sex is immutable. Any position other than that is scientifically ignorant, and a mockery of common sense. Sexual dysphoria is a mental illness. We don’t treat anorexics by putting them on a diet. Why is this different?
All woke ideology is mental illness.
Unfortunately in uk enough people voted for woke party to allow it to form government.
I won’t vote for any politician who tries to tell me trans women are women. They are either lying to me and themselves or they are dangerously deluded. In either case I’m not playing that game.
The trans issue is a political loser. Support for these types of policies is less than 15%. There is no upside for any political party supporting this stuff. As long as the Dems continue to wish away this issue, we know the radical progressives are still running the show.
The problem for Dems is that many of their supporters have already done the mental gymnastics required to accept trans. I am a UU, and have this problem with many of my co-religionists. They believe the trannie lie. They believe that children are born in the wrong body.
Once someone has gone down this rabbit hole, they are in Wonderland, where little boys can flip a switch and become little girls, where you do not have to grow up, where adulthood can be permanently eliminated and eternal youthiness is possible.
I’m in a conversation with a number of fellow UUs. I have stated, firmly, that trans is a psychotic delusion. For this, I am called “transphobe” and so forth. I actually am pleased to have this moniker. I am of course NOT afraid of trans. I simply deny the reality of this self-delusion.
Do you expect everyone to know what UU stands for? I don’t.
The DNC in the U.S. — the Democratic National Committee, which adopts party policy, selects candidates, and funds their campaigns—are not ordinary people like you & me. These are the exceedingly well-connected and exceedingly deep-pocketed social & political elite, who for the last decade-plus have been setting priorities for a country of 350 million people.
And *all* such elite Dem families are progressive families, more likely to contain a trans member, or be closely connected to families that do. They will never adopt a policy that would be seen to cut out a beloved trans family member or friend.
This is not a matter of faulty logic, but of faulty familial love.
And if these elite Dem families should contain girl athletes, they’d yield to male trans competitors (seen as “marginalized”), as elite families can compensate for their children having to yield spots to marginalized others.
It’s a faulty definition of fairness. The increased social status afforded by adopting such beliefs is worth it.
“Kamala is for they/them —President Trump is for you.”
Absolutely brilliant!
And it’s going to be the catch-phrase for the next couple campaigns. It’s a very effective line, and very effective approach.
And the freakish photos of Biden Administration members were devastating.
Yes, the photo of Admiral Levine with the suitcase thief/nuclear fuel watchdog was particularly amazing. The Biden Admin was a freak show top to bottom.
The suitcase guy was working in the government long before Biden was president.
I don’t care whether adult men decide to transition to women, or whether they simply dress in drag, but just don’t shove it in my face. But I do care about (a) gender transition in minors as it is simply unethical to encourage or even perform on a willing minor treatments (medical or surgical) that cannot be reversed and have lasting consequences. Likewise, I do care about having biological males, who supposedly identify as women, compete in women’s sports,. or prance around in women’s private spaces such as bathrooms and changing rooms. In the context of the vast majority of sports which are dependent upon strength and lung capacity, the fact is that males are stronger and faster than females.
The problem with the Democratic Party is that their leaders do not lead ordinary lives. They don’t have normal families nor extended normal friends and colleagues with prejudices and frailties. They are unable to listen, change an opinion nor forgive. They live in a self righteous bubble. I cannot see them being elected as a majority for generations.
It’s very challenging to navigate through life and the real world if one ignores basic facts, common sense and science. It is also very easy to detect when people are afflicted by this disease because every discussion becomes a tortured, tautological word game, with definitions continuously reinvented and revised to the point where all meaning is lost. It is stupidity, in its purest form.
So will the democrats revise their stance on ‘trans’? No. Because the logical progression involved in doing so would immediately call into question all the other holy catechisms of the left: critical race theory, DEI, intersectionality, structural racism, collectivism, the State ‘knows best’. Pulling on just one thread would result in the wholesale unravelling of their entire ideology, and, deep down they know this. Those who cannot deal with facts and reality inherently lack the ability for introspection; for them it is always the world that is broken and not their own view of it. This is the curse of the left.
However, they could at some point be re-elected; it just requires a majority of stupid people, and as Cipolla observed in his excellent treatise, the first law of stupidity is that “Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.”
The leaders of both parties live lives much more similar to each other than to their respective constituents’.
I remember when folks were declaring the death of the GOP following the 2012 presidential election, which struck me just as ludicrous then as the same proclamation for Democrats does now. The electorate is entirely too capricious to tolerate one-party majorities for very long, especially in light of the tendency of the party newly elected to power to overreach.
My advice for Democrats? Don’t push policies you are unwilling or unable to defend. Don’t change the subject to obfuscate the conflict. Don’t shame voters for caring about and contesting issues elites would prefer to dictate. And — if your attempts at persuasion persistently fail — consider whether you’ve gotten it all wrong.
This should be so bleeding obvious as to not need writing down. That it’s the punchline to a serious post-election-loss article in 2024 shows how bananas and removed from reality the Dems are. Well, let them stew. The longer they double down, the longer they’ll be out of power.
NO-ONE needs John Oliver. I spent the last few years joking that the Americans gave the UK Meghan Markle as a 200-years-in-the-making revenge for burning down the White House. I think giving the US John Oliver AND Prince Harry on the ricochet will settle the argument for some time.
But what is that I see? Ellen Degeneres heading for the Cotswolds? Time for round 3…
But it is the same in uk.
Young guy I know had an interview for IT job in London and pronouns were expected.
He has to display them in his email signature.
It is basically woke coercion.
In USA Trump should start with sacking mentally ill 4 star general.
“Dems refuse to change course” is who Dems are. It’s how cults behave. The public voiced its opposition to unchecked immigration, too, and the response from Team Biden down to blue state governors and mayors is a big “eff you” to those voters.
The party will not change because it cannot change. The relatively small minority on the left that controls the talking points – DC and NY media, academia, Hollywood, and a couple of others live in a bubble that purposely avoids any outside input. Such input is considered illegitimate anyway, so why bother hearing what others – like half the country plus some on your side – think about anything.
Excellent points. The country should discuss. Shaming people for wanting to talk about it is not helpful.
I honestly though Tampon Tim was a sneery name as he had the good sense to recognise period poverty and at least put a plaster on it. I didn’t realise that his team installed them in men’s toilets too, FFS. Why not just put them in hotel and restaurant and bar reception areas – be bloody less controversial. I doubt there are any in mosques.
I don’t know any man ever. and I have met thousands, that needed a sanitary product for their own practical personal use simply because they are for women.
The Democrats better make sure they can come up with some answers on the economy sharpish because any person they put up in the next few years will be neck deep in this all too predictable bullshit with nefarious undertones and they will need it to be a neutralised issue, preferably Trump and congress can put them in position where it is settled for now. And the noisy trans dimwits shut up for a while at least.
Think Labour in UK with Brexit which they needed it to go away. As long as it was in the forefront of people’s mind they were at a disadvantage due to voter demographics.
This is another silly, trendy issue. What matters is poverty taken as a whole. This is a silly attempt to turn an issue that affects both men and women (and children of both sexes) into a feminist issue.
Tampons are a good dressing for bullet wounds apparently. Not sure they got put in the Gents for that reason though.
Necessary only in specific schools in the TC.
The Walz policy applied to public schools in MN, supposedly for girls who identify as boys.
Per the wisdom of Avatar, or a variation thereof: “You can’t fill a cup that is already full of itself.”
For the American Left the American dream appears to be ever-expanding individual rights and freedoms.
And when you have the economic argument wrong, then you reach for an agenda that still allows you to feel you’re making a positive difference through a worthwhile agenda.
Clearly, that agenda is the rainbow approach to expanded sexual rights.
This is close to correct. The impulse to the trans is the unlimited possibility of human existence. The notion is that the body, like the brain, is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, and only will stops a person from changing sex, not growing to an adult.
Of course, that view is completely nuts, but there it is.
Comment deleted because it was supposed to be a reply to another comment.
Unflinchingly spot on!
To paraphrase Private Frazer “They’re doomed, doomed I tell you!”
While the position of the author is clear, the piece is well written, and not the rant we often get on this subject. When alls said and done, there are bigger issues than the trans issue and this is where politicians focus should lie.
2, they could put that to bed in 1 Min and be done with it, but no, they have to persist.
For me, the issue is competency. If you promote policies that are clearly illogical, I can’t trust you on any other issuep. And the people who believe this stuff support a whole bunch of other nonsense.
There is no bigger issue than what is the nature of reality itself, which is what the trans phenomena is about.
“When alls said and done, there are bigger issues than the trans issue and this is where politicians focus should lie.”
The “nothing to see here” tactic worked well for the political left for a few years but it’s over now. The public have seen behind the curtain.
If you believe that men who identify as women should have access to women’s separate spaces, language, sport, services etc, then you have to argue it out in the open.