Democrats Are Fighting Over How to Respond to Effective GOP Ads on Trans Issues

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The NY Times published this yesterday. I’m not sure it’s actually news at this point since this has been discussed for the past two weeks, but it does frame the basic debate within the party.

Since Ms. Harris’s defeat, her campaign’s decision has landed in the center of a contentious debate over how large a role transgender issues played in her party’s losses around the country. Several prominent Democrats said Ms. Harris’s relative silence was a damaging concession to Mr. Trump — and evidence that the campaign was so out of step with Americans’ views that it did not appreciate the potency of the ads…

That view has faced vocal pushback from some Democrats, particularly on the left, who warn against pinning Ms. Harris’s loss on her position on transgender rights. In a year when voters were so concerned about the economy and unhappy with President Biden, they argue, there is little hard evidence that transgender issues had a significant impact on the results.

In short, the moderates see reason to moderate while the left is claiming trans issues weren’t a factor in the election. The Times acknowledges that issues like trans athletes competing in women’s sports were not top issues cited by many voters. Nevertheless, many observers believe Trump’s ads on the issue were effective at painting Harris as too extreme and out of touch. This was especially true because she was on record supporting some of these extreme positions during her 2019 run for president. These are not winning issues for Democrats and it seems the Democrats inside the Harris campaign knew the ads were effective.

The Trump ads on transgender surgeries for inmates were among the most damaging attacks on the vice president — although not as potent as the messages about the economy, crime and immigration — said the campaign officials, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations. The campaign’s research concluded that the ads made voters think that Ms. Harris was focusing on things they did not care about, instead of the economy, their top priority…

The aides did not say whether Ms. Harris weighed in on the discussion.

But largely the campaign decided the best response was changing the subject.

Specifically, the attempt was made to change the subject back to the economy. But as we now know, the Harris camp never caught up to Trump on the economy, which was voters top issue this year. 

What Democrats are wondering now is whether ads like this will run again in 2026 or 2028 and if so, how they can prepare to handle the issue better than they did this election cycle. 

The bottom line is that Harris’ 2019 views and the Biden administration’s views in 2024 really were outside the mainstream. Majorities of Americans are against trans women competing with girls and women in sports and against giving hormones or other medical treatment to children. Unless, the party moderates on these issues, they are going to continue to see ads targeting their extreme views.

If you want further proof that Dems are outside the mainstream, just listen to some of the top comments replying to this story from Democrats and moderates.

What astounds me is that articles on this important health care topic rarely make any reference to the medical evidence. The growing body of reputable high quality research in this area has lead a majority of British, Scandinavian and European countries to change their health care policies to more limited and cautious use of gender affirming medical procedures. That body of evidence convincingly shows those medical procedures do not save lives and result in benefits to a much smaller proportion of the gender distressed population that is generally claimed in the  public discussion of the issue in North America.

A reader from LA:

I’d hardly call this a “divisive” issue. Most of the country, democrat or republican, agree that biological males cannot become female, males should not be in female sports, women and girls deserve sex-segregated and protected spaces, permanently altering children’s bodies with hormones and surgery is a bad idea, etc. People got tired of having to repeat slogans like “trans women are real women,” a phrase that in and of itself attempts to rewrite the fabric of reality. And people are also tired of gender woo like the concept of “non-binary,” which in and of itself is regressive and enforces sex stereotypes. 

I don’t care what adults do their own bodies on their own time with their own money. I care when it involves children, when it affects my right to sex-segregated spaces and activities, and when I’m being told what I can and cannot say. This was one of the weakest issues for democrats.

It’s not the messaging, it’s the policy:

What’s broken here isn’t the messaging; it’s the policy. 

You will never win back middle America by supporting taxpayer-funded gender-transition surgery for inmates. You’ll never win them back by supporting the idea that students can adopt new pronouns in school without telling their parents. You’ll never win them back by supporting the idea that biological boys can play on their daughter’s soccer teams.

Sorry, this is far left of gay marriage, and it won’t fly.

One more from a Democrat in New York.

Democrats keep accusing Republicans of taking a “fringe” issue, but then spend an inordinate amount of time and effort addressing transgender rights.  As a Democrat, I can only speak anecdotally, but I found the left’s intransigence on gender-affirming care in teens to be a very off-putting “purity” test that flies in the face of good science.   More frustratingly, I watched my teen son and his peers (white, Black and Latino) shift to the right as identify politics, including trans rights, were shoved incessantly down their throats in school. I feel like I’m doing damage control with him to make sure he doesn’t over-correct and turn conservative.

As usual, I’m not cherry-picking. In fact, I skipped over half a dozen more comments like this, all of them have the most upvotes from other readers. If NY Times’ subscribers are begging Dems to tone it down, you can safely say this issue is not a winner anywhere, except maybe on Bluesky.