Don’t Compromise on Trans Issues
By 
Jeet Heer is I think fundamentally correct here. Negotiating with Republicans is a sucker’s game on every issue. It never works out for Democrats. But there’s a myth among centrists–admittedly a smaller group all the time–that caving to Republicans on controversial issues is good politics. The problem with that is that it really isn’t backed up hard evidence. And while trans issues might currently be more controversial than other issues, like gay marriage, which one seemed to be an unspeakably radical demand and now is universally respected except for the Republican far right over the age of 40 and their judges, meaning it is highly vulnerable, there’s not much reason to think that trans issues won’t go down a similar path. Because in the end, who cares how someone identifies?
In any case, as Heer points out, Janet Protasiewicz kicked Daniel Kelly’s ass in Wisconsin this week by not compromising on any of this stuff.
But Kelly’s lurid words, while typical of contemporary GOP rhetoric in suggesting that his opponents favor child abuse, did not persuade voters. Protasiewicz won in a landslide, with 55.5 percent of the vote against 44.5 percent for Kelly (a difference of more than 200,000 votes). Protasiewicz’s performance was significantly better than Joe Biden’s in the 2020 presidential election—where he won the swing state by 49.45 percent as against 48.82 percent for Donald Trump (a difference of fewer than 21,000 votes).
Protasiewicz’s victory, in a hotly contested and crucial election in a state that is usually evenly divided between the two parties, is the latest proof of a little-understood political fact: Transphobia is an election loser for Republicans. Despite this fact, the GOP is likely to remain committed to transphobia for ideological reasons. More remarkably, leading centrist Democrats, including some in the White House, don’t realize that trans rights are a winning issue. These centrists are still too willing to compromise on trans rights. The squeamishness of the national party stands in contrast to the stance of grassroots Democrats in purple and red states such as North Carolina, Kentucky, and Nebraska. In all of these states, local Democrats have held the line against transphobia—sometimes with remarkable political success.
The best account of the political impact of transphobia can be found in a lengthy and persuasive Substack post written by a blogger writing under the name “Ettingermentum.” Despite being anonymous, Ettingermentum has gained an underground reputation among political watchers because of his extremely astute commentary on the 2022 election, including his prescient skepticism of the purported GOP red wave. His recurrent argument is that social issues such as abortion and trans rights—far from being vote winners—are an anchor weighing down Republicans.
In his post on “the modern electoral history of transphobia,” Ettingermentum shows that the trans issue became politically salient circa 2015 when social reactionaries started looking for a substitute issue to replace marriage equality, which had been rendered less potent by not just the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision but also rapid changes in public opinion. Initially, the Republican right tried to make hay out of the issue of bathroom access, with the passage of anti-trans laws in North Carolina in 2016 and the attempted passage of a bathroom law in Kentucky in 2015. North Carolina is a swing state with a Republican lean and Kentucky a very Republican state. Yet in both states Democratic candidates that rejected transphobia won the governorship (Roy Cooper in North Carolina in 2017, Andy Beshear in Kentucky in 2019). They did so in elections where the GOP ran demagogic campaigns giving priority to the trans issue.
More recently, Republicans have focused their fire on issues involving care for trans minors and restrictions on trans athletes so they can only compete in sports categories of their birth gender. In Nebraska currently, Democratic state Senator Megan Hunt is conducting a brave and principled ongoing filibuster to stop the passage of anti-trans legislation targeting gender care for minors.
And OK, some dude on the internet may or may not be correct and maybe it’s a thin reed for a full column, but the point is pretty strong–where’s the evidence that caving on these issues ever helps Democrats? Standing up for freedom, justice, and basic human decency is a pretty good way to go. Even if you lose, you lose the right way. And the cave means caving to the worst people in the world. It probably makes sense politically and it definitely makes sense morally to not do that.