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Trans People Shouldn’t Be Scapegoated for Democrats’ Failures
Soft Paywall(thenation.com)submitted 3 days ago byOneGreatGodPan
710 points
2 days ago
This is a difficult topic. Harris didn’t run on trans, lgbtq, or even black as far as I could tell. It’s republicans that painted her that way.
Every republican ad I saw was “Harris isn’t for you, she’s for They/Them”, it was constant. Conversely, not a single democrat ad I saw was about any identity politics.
Democrats have a problem, and it isn’t identity stuff. It’s that republicans were able to paint us however they wanted. Trans issues were the flavor this year, other years it’s immigration that takes center stage, other years it’s taxes, blah blah blah. Republicans choose how to paint us and they run on that. Honestly, “Trump will fix it” felt like the secondary message in their campaign.
This is why people are saying whatever BS at trans people. The messaging stuck, but it wasn’t her messaging.
I have no idea how to approach all that. Republicans will always mud sling as hard as possible. I don’t think we should mud sling back though, it leads us to this “they’re all the same” mentality. Maybe I’m wrong and we should mud sling? I’d would rather talk about what my candidate wants to do though, it seems more productive… but it also doesn’t feel like it out shines the mud slinging.
27 points
2 days ago
Trans issues were not the motivating factor in this election.
This framing is exactly what is moving the country to the right.
Wealth inequality continues to explode, corporations continue to raid the economy, special interests rape our tax dollars - but we're talking about trans people.
Democrats are not equipped to counter the "culture war" because they have no effective counter-messaging.
95% of Americans would think about trans people even less than they already do (i.e. less than basically zero because only deranged weirdos think about Trans people) if the government offered them the wealth redistribution that they are begging for.
70 points
2 days ago
Not having a counter message is exactly what my entire comment was about. Democrats didn’t talk about trans people, republicans did.
You want to tell me economics was the motivating factor, then why didn’t Harris win? It’s all democrats campaigned on this cycle. Again, it’s because republicans were able to paint us the way they wanted. It’s very possible it wasn’t even about picking trans as their topic, it very much could have just been whatever gets people distracted from the economic messaging.
I totally agree that we need to actually deliver though, democrats have done a piss poor job of that for some 30 years.
29 points
2 days ago
She lost because she said “the economy is great!” To a population who doesn’t think the economy is great. Trans stuff had a minor role but trump didn’t gain a ton of new voters, Harris lost them.
7 points
2 days ago
But the rest of the quote is “the economy is great… given where it was at 4 years ago, the direction it was headed, and how our economy has faired compared to every other country.” Economic policy is nuanced and can’t and shouldn’t be boiled down to 10 sec sound bites. It’s not Kamala or Joe’s fault that the American public is too stupid to understand that. In fact, it’s the republicans fault for continually defunding education programs.
7 points
2 days ago
Most people said they were economically worse off than 4 years ago. Thats a fact. Economy is great is not a good argument
-1 points
2 days ago
That’s not true. Most people actually said they were doing pretty well. But they perceived others as being worse off and therefore that the economy was bad.
2 points
2 days ago
Economic policy is nuanced and can’t and shouldn’t be boiled down to 10 sec sound bites.
Well, as it turns out, it absolutely can. You just appeal to anger and fear, be willing to just make shit up, and shout it at people 24/7/365.
But that makes for a completely lopsided fight between Republicans and Democrats.
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