AOC Explains Trump's 'They/Them' Transgender Ad, and It

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A lot has been said about why Democrats lost the 2024 election, but if you were waiting with bated breath for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s take, wait no longer. Appearing with Joy Reid on MSNBC, perhaps the worst person imaginable to talk about any kind of campaign post-mortem with, the New York congresswoman put on her thinking cap and “explained” the real reason Democrats came up short.

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As the use of quotes above indicates, “explains” is doing a ton of work in that description. Still, what Ocasio-Cortez says is instructive. Just not in the way she thinks.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: You know, all of this debate that people are talking about with this woke thing, right? “Oh, my gosh, it’s because we care about trans people, that’s why there’s a backlash.”

REID: And by the way, only Donald Trump cared about trans people because he was the one running $130 million worth of ads. The Harris campaign said nothing about this issue.

You can probably see where this is going, and momentarily, Ocasio-Cortez is going to completely miss the boat. Still, it’s worth talking about Reid’s response first because she’s just as clueless. It is false that Harris never highlighted transgenderism during her campaign. Within days of her announcing her presidential run, the vice president went on “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” to claim transgenderism was under attack.

Further, Harris’ prior position on using taxpayer money to pay for sex change operations for convicted criminals and illegal aliens became an issue. That she tried to duck it doesn’t mean it wasn’t relevant and something she was ultimately responsible for injecting into the public consciousness. No one made her say that in 2019.

What Reid is doing is what Democrats always do when something they’ve pushed becomes toxic. Namely, they claim it’s not an issue and that Republicans are falsely making it one. Tell that to the transgender performers invited to the White House, the declarations put out by the Biden administration, and the codifying of transgenderism in the military. The GOP did not manufacture this issue. Democrats gladly created it.

Which brings me to Ocasio-Cortez’s theory.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: That’s right, that’s right, and listen, it’s not even to deny the fact that these ads were effective in certain areas. What I think people are paying too much attention to is the first half of that ad, which says, that said, “Kamala Harris is for they/them.” Everyone is focusing on that. They’re not focusing on the second half of that ad where he said, “Donald Trump is for you.”

REID: Yeah, yeah.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: And Democrats very often, in their messaging, they speak in this, in terms and in concepts, and not in the second person. “I care about you,” and political races are not about one candidate vs. another candidate. Too often, it gets pigeonholed like that. It is a race about who cares about you more.

Is it too cliche to use the term “cope” to describe the above? Because that’s cope. The idea that those Trump ads were not effective because they accurately described the Democrat position on transgenderism is nonsense. Sure, there is some truth to the idea that the now-president-elect successfully convinced voters he cared about them, but the juxtaposition with Harris’ views on transgenderism in those ads was the entire reason that argument worked. Would an ad simply saying “I care about you” have been as effective? Of course, not.

Democrats don’t want to admit the obvious, though, because that would mean admitting their obsession with transgenderism is actually the problem. This isn’t a messaging issue for them. Speaking in the “second person,” as Ocasio-Cortez says, won’t suddenly make boys playing girl’s sports acceptable to most Americans. Nor will it make “gender-affirming care” for minors popular.

In other words, Democrats have a position issue. Until they change those positions, which will in turn change how they talk about them, they will continue to lose support among normal Americans. Ocasio-Cortez and others who want to gloss over that are doing their party no good. On the contrary, they are inadvertently telling us exactly why they lost.