Embracing Balance

GOP attacks on progressive litmus tests succeeded in silence. A leading advocate on why Democrats must counter within the complexity.

Today’s guest post is from Lanae Erickson. As Third Way’s Senior Vice President for Social Policy, Education & Politics, Lanae tackles hot-button issues like immigration, abortion, religious liberty, and guns.

By Lanae Erickson

In the final few weeks leading up to Election Day, Donald Trump and his allies spent $215 million dollars attacking transgender people. “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you” was a ubiquitous tagline. It will take months to better understand the true impact of that massive and ugly blitz.

But studying its impact can inform twin goals: maximizing the odds of Democrats regaining power at the federal level and minimizing harm to transgender Americans.

When asked which issues were driving their candidate choice, only a tiny proportion of voters ever named transgender issues. And research from the midterms showed transgender attack ads fell flat last cycle. Yet the Trump campaign claimed those ads were some of their best-testing. And since they won in such a definitive fashion, for the sake of argument let’s assume they are right.     

There were significant differences between the ineffective ads run by GOP candidates in the midterms and those from the presidential election. The Trump ads have been framed as entirely anti-transgender in media headlines, but the content leaned heavily on issues that voters did prioritize. The most prominent ads featured “prisoners,” “illegal immigrants,” and the economy, by emphasizing “taxpayer funding.” By hitting immigration, crime, and the economy in a milieu with transgender people, these ads drove a broader message that may have landed more squarely with voters’ top concerns. 

What is also true is that Vice President Kamala Harris never responded to those attacks in a meaningful way. And no response means surrender. This was a political mistake, as well as a problem for transgender people who are among the most endangered Americans today and had to endure hundreds of millions of dollars of advertisements that pilloried and caricatured them. 

As we sift through what just happened and plot a path forward, part of what we must do is free the Democratic brand and Democratic candidates from the stranglehold of politically toxic, left-wing litmus tests. Defunding the police is a terrible idea. Most Latino people do not call themselves Latinx. And yes, many Americans may be confused, frustrated, or even angered with demands that they must list their pronouns as part of their social media profile. But then here is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the reality that nearly all transgender folks simply want to live their lives with a semblance of normalcy. By equating this population with the movements who are driving the “woke” litmus tests, we risk sending an even bigger invitation for Trump to target them for harm and abuse.     

Elevating the full breadth of progressive litmus tests was Trump’s goal with these ads: to make Harris seem “dangerously liberal.” It is one hundred percent valid in this moment for supporters of LGBT people, from candidates and advocates to everyday Americans, to worry about the impact of the political assault we witnessed and feel that the response was insufficient. Too many Democrats felt ill-equipped to handle these attacks, particularly around sports, and went silent in fear of messing it up. Part of those fears are driven by the potential response from Republicans, and the risk of elevating an issue seen as favorable to the GOP. Part is also driven by the same constellation of progressive advocacy groups who enforce litmus tests by harassing Democratic elected officials on issues ranging from student loan debt cancellation to immigration and energy. But the resulting silence is deadly, and there are ways for LGBT supporters to respond in a way that acknowledges concerns, creates space for evolving views, and reasserts our basic value proposition: that transgender young people exist, they deserve respect and protection, and they and their parents deserve the freedom to make their own healthcare decisions with their doctors—without threats and harassment from politicians.     

While the most prominent attack ads invoked top issues like immigration, crime, and the economy this cycle, there was also an emphasis on participation in sports. Trump and his allies smashed together every issue under the sun related to transgender people because, as one said on the record to The New York Times, they “threw everything at the wall” to see what sticks. Sports stuck, because it invokes the traditional American value of fairness along with concerns about player safety. Trump’s intention is to use that issue as a wedge to win elections. But for the broader social conservative movement, the goal is to erode support for the very existence of transgender people—first by denying them access to medically-necessary health care, and then by sowing doubt that they’re real altogether by repeatedly calling transgender girls “biological men” until everyone in the political ecosystem starts repeating it.

We cannot fall into their trap. The truth is that neither political party wants anyone to be able to play on any sports team they want. One party wants schools and sports associations to continue to enforce and update rules that ensure sports are fair and student athletes are safe. Democrats don’t think there should be a free-for-all: we think there’s a difference between an 8-year-old wanting to play soccer with her friends at recess and an NCAA athlete getting a scholarship, between the rules we need for archery and the rules we need for basketball. Republicans, on the other hand, want to pass a nationwide ban that not only creates a one-size-fits-all rule based on bias not science but also harms all women and girls. I, for one, do not want to live in a country where my niece and yours have to be interrogated about their menstrual cycles and even undergo a genital check in order to sign up for 2^nd grade soccer. And I certainly don’t want Trump and his allies to be the ones conducting those interrogations.      

Allowing Republicans to dominate the conversation within this complexity will lead to both a more difficult electoral environment for Democrats and more harm to transgender Americans. Voters have become more understanding on transgender issues in recent years, but many remain conflicted. Gallup polling shows voters overwhelmingly oppose laws banning gender-affirming care, but they also oppose sports participation based entirely on gender identity. Our research found the same initial concern about sports participation, but more nuanced views emerged in focus groups once voters learned more about the complexities. If Democrats engage, we can strike this balance—if we fail to engage, we will lose.

Issues around transgender people still rank low on the prioritization list for voters, and the attack ads on moderate Democratic statewide candidates did not work in the midterms. The onslaught of presidential attack ads this cycle were designed for a more specific purpose: to ensure that Kamala Harris would be tied to the positions she took in her ultra-progressive campaign in the 2020 primary, not only around gender but on crime and immigration as well. Future candidates must be better insulated from far-left critiques of all kinds, and on issues around transgender people, be prepared to win the battle of reasonableness by rebutting political attacks in a way that matches the understanding but conflicted views held by voters.

We just experienced a political earthquake in more ways than one. We can’t stick our head in the sand, and we should deeply examine how we got here and what we need to do to rehabilitate the Democratic brand so we can beat MAGA forces next time. But we should also be able to distinguish between “woke” faculty lounge demands and issues on which the American people are still conflicted. We were never going to abolish the police, and Latinos never started saying Latinx. Democrats must defend transgender Americans, especially in the face of the parade of coming attacks from Trump and his allies. But in the end, protecting this vulnerable population relies on a Democratic Party that can win.