Dems going after trans people this week should be ashamed of themselves

Be skeptical of those proposing instant solutions — especially when they involve making vulnerable people even more vulnerable.

Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election to a second term as president, some Democrats have begun lobbing anti-transgender attacks — and other “let’s panic” responses. Such instant responses are shameful and must not become a part of the broader Democratic Party response to Trump’s win.

New York Rep. Tom Suozzi, Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, D.C.’s Matt Yglesias, and others are, at least in part, blaming transgender people and Democrats’ support for transgender people’s equal treatment for Democrats’ showing following a glut of anti-trans ads run by Republicans. To varying degrees, the three men’s responses to the 2024 election suggest, if not outright say, that the Democratic Party must fundamentally rethink parts of itself.

This is a problem for multiple reasons — and must stop.

First, proper analysis takes time.

Yes, Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss, especially one so important and with such real consequences, requires introspection, analysis, and potential changes moving forward. I am not arguing with that.

The “red shift” is notable and real, and we need to figure out what it means and how to address it. (But, more on that below.)

That does not, however, mean abandoning long-term principles with almost knee-jerk reactions and absolutist insistence.

Second, for some, this is an excuse.

Relatedly, anyone expressing such confidence right now in their assessment of the lessons to be taken from the 2024 election is likely either just spitballing — or already knew what they wanted and are using these results to advance their long-sought goals.

In few instances was that more clear than when Yglesias posted his “principles for Common Sense Democrats to reform governance in the blue zones and be competitive in the red zones.” Most of these are just reworded Republican positions that Yglesias has always — or at least long before Election 2024 — held. So, the entire thing is a bit of misdirection from him. He is not analyzing the election and proposing solutions; he is using this election as an excuse. Here is his only slightly coded anti-trans position:

That’s not even the debate. The public policy debate is over whether your “biological sex” — the sex assigned to a person at birth, generally based on external sex organs — controls your identity for life; whether “biological sex” and “gender identity” can be discordant; and whether “biological sex,” in either event, should determine, by law, the sex with which you are to be identified for all purposes.

Back to their argument.

I’ve lived through versions of this (at least) twice before, first in 1996, when then-President Bill Clinton cut off Republicans’ anti-gay efforts early by backing the Defense of Marriage Act during his re-election year. The second time was in 2004, when then-President George W. Bush backed the Federal Marriage Amendment — and proposed state marriage amendments — to help bolster his re-election.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Moulton, Suozzi, and Yglesias think that Clinton was right in ‘96.¹ It’s clear that they are for Democrats sacrificing transgender people’s right to participate fully in society in the face of aggressive anti-trans attacks today.

What’s worse is that in their comments — Moulton and Suozzi focused exclusively on trans girls’ participation in sports, and I don’t even know what Yglesias’s unprincipled “principle” does — the three men just ignore or avoid the more fundamental issues already being legislated against. Laws banning trans minors from receiving medical care have been passed in roughly half the country, Florida has a law restricting adult care, and bathroom bans and other laws restricting trans people from participating fully in society or schools have been passed in many states.

As I wrote previously when Yglesias suggested a sports-related “compromise” more than a year ago:

Yglesias doesn’t address any of [the other issues] because it’s much easier to see why this isn’t about not compromising on some idealistic policy desire. It’s about letting trans people live their lives. And, because he ignores it, he doesn’t need to explain how he would compromise on those issues.

More than a year later, nothing has changed. He’s still giving people a half-answer (or, here, less) posing as a solution when he knows the full answer would mean ending all support for trans people’s rights — and for living their lives. (It’s no different in other areas with Yglesias. His pablum list would do weird things with Democrats’ approach to climate change, racial justice, criminal justice, immigrants’ rights, and more — not just trans rights.)

Third, what if they’re just completely wrong?

I don’t know what happened, but I offer up this alternative possibility: What if the result of the 2024 presidential election had little to nothing to do with Democrats’ positions on transgender issues? Or, really, any policy positions.

What if the combination of this global moment in history, coming out of the health and related economic crises of the pandemic; the stark, albeit horrifying, hold that Trump has over many people; and the unusual circumstances of Harris’s late entrance into the race, following President Joe Biden’s late departure, made this result all but inevitable given who was in the White House now?

Here are three data points supporting that possibility:

• As the Financial Times reported, “Every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share, the first time this has ever happened.“ The vote share lost by Democrats here, moreover, was less than almost anywhere else.

• As Dave Wasserman reported on Thursday, per the latest data, “across the seven battleground states, the '20-'24 swing towards Trump was ~3.1 pts. Across the other 43 states (+DC), it was ~6.7 pts.” In the states where the candidates most heavily fought for votes, in other words, Wasserman wrote that “the Harris campaign swam impressively against some very strong underlying currents.”

• Finally, stepping back to look at the Senate races in those states, six of the seven had Senate races. Democrats appear likely to be the winners in five of the six. In the seventh state — North Carolina — Democrats won the governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general’s races. (Although it is still possible for Sen. Bob Casey to overtake Dave McCormick’s lead in the final Senate-race state of Pennsylvania, the Associated Press called the race for McCormick on Thursday evening.) [h/t Tom Gara]

Even when Trump was on the ballot, he might — at the most — end up making a difference in the outcome in one Senate race (or two, if Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s loss to Bernie Moreno is attributed to Trump’s inclusion on the ballot). No one else performs like Trump — at least not right now. It’s not good that there is a Trump, but it is good that this power over the public has not been transferrable.

If it’s not — and in light of the global picture and unusual Democratic changeup this summer — perhaps those instant assessments are completely wrong.

Fourth, protecting people is paramount.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, even if Democrats should panic — which I don’t think is the healthiest approach — shouldn’t the panic be focused on protecting people who are most likely to be targeted by Trump’s policies, followed by figuring out how to do so electorally in the future?

People whose first instinct is to instead declare that Democrats’ efforts to help people live better, fuller, more honest lives — morally correct positions — led to their political failures and should be jettisoned immediately are suspect. This is where I most harshly judge officials like Moulton and Suozzi and where I find Yglesias’s actions to be most indefensible.

If Yglesias is so smart and wants to support Democratic policies, it would have been great for him to have spent the past few years working with Democrats and LGBTQ groups to find the “principles” to help more people understand the need for trans equality.

Instead, the day after the election — after previously having spent time spitting on Democratic efforts to support trans people — Yglesias just declares that he has the solution and it, surprise, includes spitting on Democratic efforts to support trans people.

Democrats must assess what happened and perform better going forward, but should focus on protecting vulnerable people in the interim and be skeptical of those proposing instant solutions — especially when they involve making those vulnerable people even more vulnerable during the incoming Trump administration.

1. Notably, Sen. Bernie Sanders — who also lobbed criticism at the Democratic Party (of which he is not a member) — voted against DOMA at a House member in ‘96, and said nothing about trans policies in his statement this week.