game

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Sarah McBride took the stage in Wilmington, Del., on Tuesday night, making history as the first openly transgender person elected to Congress. By the time the week ended, the battered Democratic Party’s support for trans rights was shakier than ever, as two of McBride’s future Democratic colleagues’ waffling on the issue was splashed across The New York Times.

Such is the seesaw facing a party that wrongly thought they had cracked a code and built an intersectional coalition that would deliver the White House to Kamala Harris, perhaps defend their slim majority in the Senate, and maybe even claw back the third slice of the governing trifecta, the unruly House of Representatives. But with the White House gone, the Senate tanked, and the House at best an iffy proposition, the blame game has hit hyperdrive and—as is often the case in these situations—the least powerful of these voices is facing the brunt: the tiny percentage of Americans who identify as transgender, and their allies in the broader LGBTQ community.

“The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left,” re-elected Rep. Tom Suozzi told the Times on Wednesday. “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.” He then offered some advice to his party: “Democrats aren’t saying that, and they should be.”

Another Democrat seen as a centrist in his party was even gruffer a day later with the Times. “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” said Rep. Seth Moulton, who did not draw an opponent in his Massachusetts district and in 2020 even ran for President. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

The language is rough, sure. But more critically it essentially echoes the anti-trans messaging that formed a cornerstone of Republicans’ message on the culture wars, showing how Democrats still have no clear game plan for talking about these issues. At Donald Trump’s rallies, in Senate ads, and super PAC carpet bombs, Republican operatives found the anti-trans rhetoric was a sure-fire way to get voters riled up. It was classifying a group of Americans as The Other who were viewed as dispensable to a GOP coalition, so mockery came at no real price. At least $150 million of anti-trans ads were run this cycle, dredging up some truly base notions about individuals whose gender assigned at birth does not match their identity today. While non-discrimination policies are popular, they are easily mocked in circles where they are proxies for wokeness.

Two main topics drove that admittedly successful rhetoric: trans athletes competing in sports that match their gender identities—specifically trans girls competing against other girls—and widespread confusion about gender-affirming care, which is recognized by the medical community and in some limited cases comes with taxpayer coverage.

For the most part, Democrats let the attacks go unanswered. Alongside inflation and immigration, inclusion of trans youth made up the new three-legged stool of the modern GOP. It was ugly, but it worked. Some 64% of voters said they saw attacks against Harris’ support for trans rights, according to one poll from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

The most notable exception to the silence was Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, who challenged Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas. That race devolved into one of the loudest and costliest shouting matches on trans rights in the country about, of all things, youth sports.

“Boys and girls: They’re different,” Cruz’s campaign said in one ad.

Allred, a former college and NFL linebacker, had unique credibility to refute this hostility. His response: “Let me be clear: I don’t want boys playing girls’ sports, or any of this ridiculous stuff Ted Cruz is saying.” Allred seemed to accept the premise of Cruz’s argument and justified many Texas LGBTQ groups’ decision to sit the race out; Allred lost by almost 9 points.

A day after the election, the long-time chairman of Texas Democrats told public radio that the party’s message of inclusion was a losing one. “You can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up, or you can understand that there’s certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support,” Gilberto Hinojosa said on Wednesday. On Friday, he ended a 12-year run after the party’s dismal showing.

There’s plenty of blame for Democrats’ losses this week. Harris lost ground in just about every subset of voters measurable. There are plenty of anecdotes about a ground operation that was busy firing on all cylinders, but as it turns out, they were never in sync. Time was not on her side, given a truncated runway to get off the ground. Infighting that was always present is now as public as any recrimination after a loss. Millions upon millions of dollars did not make a lick of difference. She raised over $1 billion, had $118 million in the bank on Oct. 16, but is now at least $20 million in debt.

But, sure. Let’s blame the trans kids who just want to play sports. They’re an easy scapegoat, and ones who will make Democrats feel better about a stunning defeat by an opponent who has felony convictions, other indictments pending, and a list of other dishonorable firsts as long as any candidate in recent memory. It could not have possibly been because the party kept an 81-year-old presumptive nominee on track until a June meltdown during a debate led to a hasty swapping of Harris into the top role with just 107 days to sell herself. Plus, there’s the added bonus that, for the most part, trans kids just want to have a childhood like their friends—far from this pile-on of culpability from nominal allies in the Democratic Party.

Defeat always brings out the worst in people, whether it is sports or politics, families or business. Finding a common culprit is ideal, and an easy one even better. Calamities like Harris’ failure cannot be reduced to one flaw, as much as that search may be tempting. But conceding ground to the winners, as seems to be the case here in a culture-war fight that is as over-simplified as it is ill-considered, is not a way to dig out of this deep hole. Rather than ask why Democrats didn’t do more to explain that standing up for trans kids is just the right thing to do, these politicians are trying to absolve their compatriots’ silence. No one would describe Allred’s response as being woke or even inclusive, but at least he said something in the crass pursuit of winning a campaign. The silence elsewhere from Democrats, hoping the bullying of trans students would just go away, was no better.

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