Trans People Shouldn’t Be Scapegoated for Democrats’ Failures

November 20, 2024

After the election, politicians and pundits are fueling negative attitudes towards trans rights. They are playing a dangerous game.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on stage during the Pride celebration on June 28, 2023 in Washington, DC.

(Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for GLAAD)

Donald Trump’s election victory heralds an administration that will likely seek not just to dismantle but to destroy the regulatory state while promoting a narrow vision of what America should be like and who should benefit from living here.

But as election results continue to trickle in, it’s also become clear that the governing majority needed to achieve those goals may not be as strong as predicted on election night. Trump failed to win 50 percent of the electoral vote and a razor-thin GOP majority in the House and Senate.

However, instead of thinking about how this unexpectedly small mandate can be used to their advantage, a subset of Democrats decided to waste their time saying that the real reason for losing the 2024 election lies in some of the most vulnerable members of their coalition: transgender Americans and allies seeking to protect their civil rights.

Almost immediately after Trump’s victory the number with Democratic politiciansas well as top advisers in the party internal and external circles, took to the airwaves and their social media accounts to declare that the party has lost touch with the average American by catering to the party’s fringes. All of their statements seemed to have two main points: first, that the “far left” has hijacked the Democratic machine’s position on social issues, alienating voters, and second, that Democrats should distance themselves from supporting trans children , who want to play on sports teams that match their gender identity.

One representative, Seth Moulton of Massachusetts’ sixth district told The New York Times“I have two little girls, I don’t want them to be beaten on the playground by a man or an ex-athlete, but as a Democrat I should be afraid to say that.”

In Texas, former party leader Gilbert Hinojosa said that ultimately Democrats “have a choice as a party” on which issues to stand up for and which issues to compromise on.

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“You can, for example, support transgender rights up and down all the categories where there’s a problem, or you can realize that there are certain things that we’re just going too far that a large part of our population doesn’t support,” he added. . (He later apologized before stepping down entirely in the wake of the party’s landslide defeat in the state.)

These points have been echoed by other experts, such as Pamela Paul, host of Transgender Rights Talk Has Gone Too Far in Timeswho wrote an OpEd this week saying the Democratic Party should adopt “common sense” approaches to transgender rights. The message of all these figures was the same: the pursuit of equal civil and human rights should not compel those who may be inconvenienced by the consequences to pay any price.

As much as these influential political insiders and commentators would like to scapegoat kids who just want to play football for a team they like, there is little evidence that transgender rights were a deciding factor in the election. Exit floors after the election indicated that the state of the economy, a general desire for change at any cost, and the party’s drift to the right in some demographic groups were the main reasons that propelled Trump to victory in the election, rather than social issues. Even a large number who believe that abortion should be legal in most cases — a famous case for the democratic coalition — voted for Trump. Moreover, voters in Delaware elected the first openly trans congresswoman in history, Democrat Sarah McBride. (Republicans immediately started transphobic attacks on McBride, including trying to prevent her from using the women’s restroom.)

Yet, despite all this, politicians who want to take a cheap shot at a vulnerable group are happy to use trans-Americans as an example because the party knows that the community does not have much of an alternative at the polls.

“They are the only real political avenue that is willing to represent us and protect us, but at the same time they don’t listen to us,” said Bray, a trans voter from Connecticut. Nation after a week of comments from party members singling out her community. Such an application benefits no one but reactionary forces trying to erase trans people from the landscape altogether.

Perhaps one of the reasons that transgender rights became perceived as an issue of concern to Democrats is that they were embarrassed to defend them. For example, Kamala Harris gave evasive, vague answers when asked about her support for gender-affirming care, sending the message to voters that she has something to hide and increasing the political salience of the issue. Contrast that approach with that of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who has vocally stood up for trans people in a very red state and won re-election convincingly in 2023.

“There are so many ways that Democrats could have turned Republican rhetoric against them during the election,” Bray added.

Republicans are constantly trying to deny transgender minors access to health care. Democrats, including politicians like Moulton, have supported legislation such as the Transgender Bill of Rights and the Equality Act, which would have enshrined in law federal civil rights protections for transgender Americans. Whenever Democrats run into trouble, however, some members of the party’s coalition seem immediately willing to compromise those civil rights promises in search of a hypothetical bipartisanship.

As we can see, such triangulation does not bring success in elections. And it only weakens support for the transgender community at a time when the party, which plans to take power next January, has broader goals of subjugation in mind.

“What’s not helping right now is the random hotshots based on nothing and the scapegoating of people who have long been targeted by MAGA,” said Brandon Wolf, national spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ rights group. Nation. “There’s no denying that the Democrats lost on Tuesday, and everyone needs to do some introspection and education based on meaningful conversations with people across the political divide and hard data. We have a lot to work on. But this work is about being more welcoming, not less, and reaching more people with real solutions to real problems.”

It’s unclear how the party will address the rift going forward as Trump tries to ram through a cavalcade of cabinet appointees, drawing immediate attention from the party that still controls the White House and Senate for the next two months.

– says Multan the uproar his comments caused only shows how right he was to raise the issue in the first place. “We have to be able to have that debate,” he added. But fortunately, we can also mention some of them his second words that Democrats everywhere should heed: “We didn’t lose the 2024 election because of any trans person or issue.”

We cannot retreat

We now face a second Trump presidency.

There is nothing to lose. We must use our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger to oppose the dangerous policies that Donald Trump is unleashing on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as principled and honest journalists and authors.

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Armed with 160 years of courageous independent journalism, our mandate remains the same today as it was when the Abolitionists were founded Nation— to defend the principles of democracy and freedom, to serve as a beacon in the darkest days of resistance, and to see and fight for a bright future.

The day is dark, the forces are building tenaciously, but it’s too late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is just the time when artists go to work. No time for despair, no room for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we make language. This is how civilizations heal.”

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Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, Nation