“Democrats should be focusing on Trump’s tanked economy and our diminished standing on the world stage,” said Jeremy Comeau, president of the National Federation of Stonewall Democrats. “People are being hammered by the cost of living, and we have a president who’d rather rename a gulf like some deranged cartographer than deal with the realities of the world. Democrats should be running on that every single day.
“Instead, some candidates think the way to look moderate is to take a swing at trans people first. That’s not moderate; that’s just careless, and it’s not what’s going to win this election.”
The sad thing is many regular people in the USA are such assholes that given the choice between “treat trans people poorly and extreme poverty for most people” or “treat trans people nicely and have affordability and a good economy” many people will choose the platform that fucks themselves over and treat trans people badly… because they are just that religious and stupid.
Part of the problem has always been that centrist dems are afraid to fight – or uninterested in it. They are the kids on the playground who arent nerds and arent popular, and are afraid of being picked on or noticed by the bullies. The useless and uninteresting middle that react and want whatever the status quo is. Leaders and solutions never come from that group that might as well be shrubbery-- leaders come from the bullies, the popular kids, or the nerds. We cant look to centrists for solutions. They dont care about solutions.
Trans hate propaganda from republicans in america wouldn’t be nearly as effective if Dems would grow a fucking backbone and stand against it.
This is true about most fascist propaganda and it’s why we need to purge the Dems and replace every corporate zionist centrist dipshit from the party.
it’s fine everyone’s going to vote dem anyway
unless you’re a fundamentalist in which case we just don’t know what single issue you will latch on to next to give you an excuse not to vote dem and allow nazis back in
The trick is to do both. When they scapegoat a group, call them out, with the truth, they are scapegoating a group they are villainizing to distract from their efforts to take what american workers have earned and give it to billionaires, and so forth.
You know who would be great at this as head of the ticket in 2028? Sawn Fein, UAW Boss.
SO mUcH fOR tHe TolERaNt LeFt
I am very tolerant. If I wasn’t… you would be hearing about a new serial killer with thousands of bodies to her name. All of whom would have a swastika and Star of David carved onto their face and pedo lover painted on the walls in their blood.
But I am tolerant enough to just flip off the filthy big three of zionists. Israeli genocide filth, Nazi (maga) sex trafficking filth, and Jihadist pedophile filth.
I hate it, but I’m not sure that’s true. A part of me always wonders how much of the Red Team’s anti-LGBT shouting happens because there was a subset of them who are dogmatically hateful of minorities of basically any type, which the Blue Team then used in smear tactics to generate negative partisanship because America is, in theory, supposed to be against discrimination against minorities, but by making the issue more prominent, the Blue Team may have forced the issue to polarize into something for the Red Team either to fully ignore, as they do with other inconveniently ugly elements of their support base, or turn into a central pillar, and they decided to centralize it, turning what was a quiet minority hate, bad but limited in scope, into almost industrial scale hatemongery powered by politically aligned media systems. It seems worryingly plausible that by creating a political codification of trans-ness, it took anti-trans hate from being caused by religious delusions and turned it into a way to ‘be a good American’ for a much larger audience. When you also consider how the Dems don’t really change much of anything when they do ‘stand against’ anything because they seem mostly to do it for the looks rather than real support, I have to wonder if turning trans people into a rallying flag will just lead to more trans people being attacked, legally and illegally.
by making the issue more prominent, the Blue Team may have forced the issue
See that’s the thing: they never did.
The GOP and their propagandists (paid and otherwise) were always the ones obsessing about trans people.
Apart from some performative slogans and comparatively meek mutterings that basically amounts to “I can see what you mean, but there’s no need to be cruel about it”, the DNC have all but abandoned trans people in favor of trying to find a logical and fair middle ground with bigots who don’t care about logic or fairness.
THAT’S why it’s a losing issue for them: the bigots lie about them being “gender extremists” (🙄) for not vilifying trans people, and their answer is just “this but a little less? Please?”
If they DID wholeheartedly support trans people at every turn and refused to play into the objectively false narratives ar all, it would be a winning issue, but that would require the ideological and moral backbone they sold to their owner donors long ago.
There’s a simple answer. Don’t waste precious breath, simply tell the truth, I stand for the rights of trans people like I stand for the rights of every citizen. Trans rights are human rights. Also, this is a distraction, this is not a national panic, there’s not very many of them, they have always been here, they will continue to be here and they’re no more of a threat today, tomorrow, or the next day than they were 100 years ago, so I’m not getting dragged into rage bait, and if they push the issue, asked and answered.
You don’t need to expound expansively on it, and the more you do, the more likely you are to be playing to a niche subset of a niche subset anyway. A simple “That’s a gross way to frame that, and also bait” is usually sufficient. We don’t need to abandon “Trans issues” we just need make it clear, they’re scaring themselves with ghost stories and a handful of spectacularly rare problems, and if they keep whipping themselves into a frenzy, it won’t be long until they’re beating women to death to find out if she has the right parts inside.
This is the same failed strategy Democrats have been trying for a decade.
Nope. Trying to compromise with bigoted lunacy is the failed strategy the Dem leadership has been trying for SEVERAL decades.
People need to work on the their reading comprehension. The failed strategy is the idea that we can shy away from trans rights and try to portray it as a distraction. GreenBeards comment is not describing anything new. They’re describing the very strategy Democrats have been using for a decade at this point. They’re too cowardly to come out and fully defend and support trans people, and they try to third way it.
I don’t know how to explain to you, we are not throwing trans people under the bus. Period. If you can’t win without a scapegoat, then you don’t deserve to win. If this is to end in fire, we will all burn together and you’re coming down with us.
You tried to throw Palestine under the bus and created this. Do it again and you will lose worse. Grow a spine and stand for something. Democrats are failing because no one trusts them. So earn some goddamn trust and quit looking for the next minority you can sacrifice.
You have very poor reading comprehension.
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They have been standing against it, and it is quite clear that the Dems support it. End of story. Stop talking about it.
The ONLY response to any attempt to draw someone into a trans debate is this:
“That is a medical issue, and I am not a doctor, and I would NEVER presume to come between a doctor and their patient.l on any subject. As a politician, I believe that it is immoral and unethical to interfere with medical matters, so I have no opinion, and further, I am not interested in yours either. Let’s talk about something relevant to American Citizens, like Healthcare, or Taxing Billionaires, or the Epstein Files, or the AmerIsraeli War®. Which would like to discuss?”
That works for any medical discussion, including Abortion. The only time to discuss medical issues is when we are discussing RFK, Jr’s crimes.
As long as we allow MAGA to keep us defending ourselves on their chosen wedge issues, we are LOSING. Whenever they bring up Hasan Piker, or Trans, or Biden, or whatever their wedge issue Boogeyman of the day is, we need to ignore it, dismiss it, bat it away without a single comment about it, and steer the conversation to one of these topics:
Affordability: The big one, it got Trump elected, and it will get Dems elected even more
Epstein Files: Full disclosure. Trump and his friends are in them
Data Centers: They will destroy everything, and we’ll pay for it.
AI: The future is either a permanent 50%+ unemployment rate, or they murder all of humanity.
Flock Cameras: You will now get daily fines in your mailbox whenever you go 3 mph over the speed limit, and they will track you down and arrest you if you have overdue library books.
ICE: They will kill us, they are already doing it.
Taxing Sociopathic Oligarchs and their Corporations: They will pay their fair share of taxes, or we’ll just take it all.
Health Care: What health care?
Student Loan Reform: Sure, just saddle your most productive young citizens with a lifetime of debt as soon as the graduate from college. That won’t ever affect the entire economy in a few years, when they can’t afford ANYTHING.
MAGA Corruption: Were just going to let this continue like it’s somehow legal?
The AmerIsraeliWar®: The Draft is coming. The front line of a war is a great place to siphon your dissidents.
Mass Surveillance: If you aren’t doing anything illegal, then what are you worried about? What’s illegal? EVERYTHING!
Investigations, Impeachments, Prosecutions of MAGA crime: A president, a Secretary of Defense, a White House Advisor, a bunch of Homeland security turds, a few SCOTUS justices, some congressmen and senators, etc.
These are the real issues, and we need to take control of every discussion, steer them to these issues, and make them defend their record, and their plans for America’s future.
Democrats have been trying exactly your message for a decade, and it’s failed. They’ve tried again and again. And it’s failed again and again. Here’s what a voter actually watching a debate experiences:
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Republican goes on transphobic rant.
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Democrat responds with anything but a full-throated support of trans rights. They say, “we should leave it up to doctors and parents, I’m here to talk about other things.” They call it a distraction. They don’t support the bigotry, but they also do anything they can to avoid the topic.
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Voters read this as a deflection. They think the Democrat is trying to avoid the issue (because they are). And since the Democrat won’t vehemently and openly support trans rights. The Republican is demonizing trans people, and the Democrat is avoiding the subject. They conclude that the Republican is probably right and that the Democrat is just afraid to offend their radical base. The Democrat is clearly ashamed of the issue, and people can smell that a mile away.
Want to know how to respond to “concerns” about trans people in bathrooms? Point out that Jim Crow was built on the “valid concerns” of white women not feeling safe sharing space with black women. Want to know how to talk about trans kids? Point out that any hand wringing about this can only come from a viewpoint that fundamentally does not view the lives of cis people and trans people as equally valuable. (The only way you can justify withholding treatment from 50 trans kids just in case one cis kid makes a mistake is if you don’t hold the lives of both in equal value.) Publicly state that of course trans people change their sex, and that it’s absurd to argue that trans women should have to use women’s restrooms. Argue that trans women belong in women sports because they’re biologically female, not because of vague platitudes about identity and validity. In other words, fully embrace trans rights and know how to actually talk about and defend them in a coherent way.
You can’t third way your out of this. Democrats have been trying for a decade. Kamala responded to transphobia not with a full-throated support for trans rights, but with a mealy-mouthed “I’ll enforce the law.”
Democrats have been arguing for a decade that this is a distraction, but that’s not how voters think. If one party constantly brings an issue up, low-information voters will assume it’s an issue worth considering. And if the other side just keeps calling it a distraction, the voters will conclude the Democrats are trying to hide something and side with the Republican. You can’t just ignore these issues. It doesn’t work. It’s been tried, and it’s failed.
What you’re missing is that Democrats HAVE NOT been talking about this. Sure, they largely haven’t been voting for transphobic bills, but their approach has been, “don’t talk about trans people publicly, but support trans people privately.” And it just hasn’t worked. Your approach isn’t novel. It’s just more of the same. In an era when authenticity matters to voters more than anything else, calling an issue a distraction is a suicidal election strategy.
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"They have been standing against it, and it is quite clear that the Dems support it. End of story. "
Debatable at best. Ask the recently defeated Seth Moulton, or Acton in Ohio. Ask those twats over at Third Way. I wish you were right, I really do. Hard to forget those centrist fucks blaming us for them losing the election in 2024.
And I get your point about not allowing the right to dictate the discourse and I say the same all the time. I don’t have a choice about talking about this issue. It’s my life dude, I’m gonna talk about it.
YOU should talk about it, it’s your thing, but the party shouldn’t, because it isn’t even close to being the highest priority for most Americans. Not because it isn’t important, but based on the number of people it directly affects, it’s fairly low on the priority scale, and therefore not likely to attract many votes on its own. Therefore, it shouldn’t be at the front of the party’s campaign messaging.
OTOH, it WILL attract MAGA votes, so why should we indulge their bigotry, and help them get their votes, and hurt us, when we can spend the time on subjects that attract votes to our side, and demoralize them and repress their votes?
The first rule of politics is Get Elected, so we have to pursue that objective, over making sure every single person’s pet issue gets attention. Those people will have to hope that they are voting for the side that is most likely to serve their interests.
I wouldn’t advise them to make trans rights a core campaign issue, but rebutting the opposition’s arguments is a slam dunk move when you have facts on your side, which they very much do when it comes to the trans people.
If facts matter we wouldn’t be in this place we’re in. People are stupid in general and facts don’t matter to many, many people.
They don’t care about trans people and they never will. They use it as a distraction topic and nothing else. There is zero point in engaging in that debate with anyone who identifies as a Republican.
Well, the way to engage is to call it what it is, an attempt to scapegoat a group so they can steal from us, and so forth. You don’t go point for point with a bad faith arguer like that. You call it out as another distraction from their unpopular plans to enslave us to tech and so forth.
but rebutting the opposition’s arguments is a slam dunk move when you have facts on your side
Unfortunately too many dems are happy to either not do that at all or completely concede and agree with Republicans on anything anti trans
Why do you think dems are attacking trans people? They’re more than happy to attack the vulnerable if don’t think it’ll impact them, or think they’ll get moderate/republican voters if they do it
Gay marriage. Definitely helped Gee Dubs in 2004. Hell, it lasted through Obama. Don’t ask don’t tell was Clinton’s attempt. Abortion was the perennial.
It’s not that these are not issues; it’s that these are dishonestly bandied about, always started by republicans, to shore up cheap support. Because they got nothin.
One can be concerned about these issues and still recognize its the GOP pulling the same shit every election, to great effect.
Agreed, to do otherwise is allowing them to choose the battlefield. The thing to remember is that the conservative voting base only emphasizes with what harms their own in-groups. You can bring the best facts to the table on other topics and their base will just shrug and move into the next shiny grievance / moral panic that they’re being fed.
Whenever you have an opening to cut their legs out from under them on an issue their own voters are unhappy about, you put it on blast. Every time.
During Obama Fox unexpectedly embraced gay marriage in 2012.
The Republicans surely didn’t all try to stop playing that card, but the gay hate really fell off after that, that I saw just from the news and everything.
Yeah. But it was a decade of drum-beating and election results in-between. Plus the “defense of marriage” idiocy, and proposed amendment.
So when it magically disappeared it was all the more obvious what a stunt it had been.
I remember 2004 that was bush’s big thing to whip up support. Seems so quaint now compared to what we have going on, as horrific as it all was then with the worst president to date.
I forgot about the amendment thing, trying to remember that was 2004 election stuff too right?
