Democrats are grappling with how to handle transgender politics and policy following a campaign that featured withering and often misleading GOP attacks on the issue. There’s plenty of second-guessing after President-elect Donald Trump anchored his victory with grandiose promises on the economy and immigration.
By BILL BARROW and MARC LEVY
ATLANTA After losing the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats are grappling with how to handle transgender politics and policy following a campaign that featured withering and often misleading GOP attacks on the issue.
There is plenty of second-guessing after President-elect Donald Trump anchored his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris with sweeping promises on the economy and immigration. But Democrats also will not soon forget the punchline in anti-transgender Trump ads that became ubiquitous by Election Day: “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”
“Week by week when that ad hit and stuck and we didn’t respond, I think that was the beginning of the end,” former Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said of the 30-second spot that was part of $215 million in anti-transgender advertising by Trump and Republicans, according to tracking firm AdImpact.
“They painted her as something I don’t think she is,” Rendell said. “They painted her as a far-left liberal.”
The fallout leaves some progressive and moderate Democrats struggling between the party’s modern identity as a champion of civil rights and its electoral fortunes across swaths of America with whom those attacks resonated.
“There are just a number of issues where we’re out of touch,” Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview, days after he set off recriminations within his party for saying he didn’t want his daughters playing in sports against biological males. Critics said Moulton echoed Trump’s talking points about liberals allowing “men to compete in women’s sports.”
“I think that Republicans have a hateful position on trans issues,” Moulton told The Associated Press, but insisted that Democrats still lose voters because of the party’s “attitude.”
“Rather than talk down to you and tell you what to believe,” he argued, Democrats should “listen to hard-working Americans.”
LGBTQ+ advocates, meanwhile, are arguing that the 2024 election turned more on economic issues than Trump’s transgender rhetoric. They’re urging political leaders to counter misinformation that they say threatens the health and safety of transgender Americans, who make up less than 1% U.
