Can We Talk About This?
Democrats wrestle with the transgender issue
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a sultan. The palace becomes a circus.” -- Turkish Proverb
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As Donald Trump continues to define deviancy down, our own national circus is taking shape. I give you the new deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counter terrorism, Seb Gorka, a man so cartoonish he makes cartoons blush.
Happy Sunday.
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Let’s start this holiday week with a moment of gratitude, because thankfully the outrages being inflicted on America are leavened with moments of dark comic relief. It is weird enough that Seb Gorka is accepted at all by polite society, but here he is on his way back to the White House. (His new job does not require Senate confirmation.)
Leave aside the Hungarian Nazi-adjacent stuff for the moment.1 I am especially grateful to be given the opportunity to re-up one of my favorite moments from the last decade — Gorka’s legendary Release of the Kraken back in 2019.
Really, take some time to watch this: Here’s the link and it’s definitely worth a click. SOUND UP!
Via Mediaite: “Sebastian Gorka Mocked for Overtly Dramatic Monologue Video.”
Gorka opened the video saying “I knew this day would come, but I didn’t expect it so soon,” crowing about Trump’s order allowing Attorney General Bill Barr to declassify information about the 2016 election.
“The Kraken has been unleashed,” Gorka declared in his signature affected bellow. “Watch, in the next two days, the rats, the hyenas, start to eat each other.”
A large light source appears to be placed behind the camera for Gorka’s monologue, overexposing the video which seems to be inspired by villainous monologues from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
The darkly lit video hearkens back to a haunting 2018 video from Gorka, where the loud scream of a woman is heard in the background.
Twitter users of various political stripes came together to mock the ridiculous video.
Exit take: Chef’s kiss.
Can we talk about this? Because it’s not clear we can.
Will Democrats be able to have a conversation about the party’s approach to transgender rights? And what will the terms of that debate be? Is there room for compromise, or will dissenters be shouted down and cancelled?
Are Democrats too afraid of angering the activist base to change course?
The questions are crucial, because the issue played a significant role in what just happened. Anti-transgender political ads dominated the airwaves in swing states. In the days between October 7-20, Trump's campaign and pro-Trump groups spent an estimated $95 million and more than 41 percent of those ads were anti-trans. Some estimates put the total spending on anti-trans ads at more than $200 million.
If you watched any television at all — especially sports — you probably saw this ad:
Man:
Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners.
Woman:
For prisoners.
Kamala Harris:
Surgery for prisoners. Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access.
Man:
Hell no, I don't want my taxpayer dollars going to that.
Man:
Kamala supports transgender sex changes in jail without money.
Man:
Kamala even supports letting biological men compete against our girls in their sports. Kamala is for they, them. President Trump is for you.
The ads worked. The party’s failure to answer the attacks clearly damaged the Harris campaign. How much we don’t know, because there were multiple factors in Trump’s victory - inflation, immigration, crime, race, and gender. But the trans issue was obviously a potent wedge, which is why Trump bet so big on it.
An analysis by the Democratic-aligned polling initiative, Blueprint, found that in the final days of the campaign, swing voters broke for Trump 52% versus just 38% for Harris. Eighty-three percent of those swing voters believed that Harris supported taxpayer funding for transgender surgeries for undocumented immigrants.
The results paint a clear picture: Democrats were punished for inflation, misalignment on immigration and cultural issues, and Biden. The top three reasons not to vote for Harris were:
“Inflation was too high under the Biden-Harris Administration” (+24)
“Too many immigrants illegally crossed the border under the Biden-Harris Administration” (+23)
“Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class” (+17) Among swing voters? +25
Other analyses noted the unpopularity of many of the “progressive” positions on cultural issues, including immigration (and somewhat misleadingly on Israel and Hamas). But note the numbers on “Boys in Girl’s Sports"(-43%) and “Trans puberty blockers” (-37%).
So, a debate has broken out. Commentators noted the role of cultural issues in the erosion of Democratic support among the working class — including among non-whites. Adam Jentleson — former chief of staff to Senator John Fetterman and deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid— put the issue squarely in a recent New York Times op-ed:
Democrats cannot [achieve electoral dominance] as long as they remain crippled by a fetish for putting coalition management over a real desire for power…Democrats remain stuck trying to please all of their interest groups while watching voters of all races desert them over the very stances that these groups impose on the party.
[When] Kamala Harris was running for the Democratic nomination in 2019, the A.C.L.U. pushed her to articulate a position on surgeries for transgender prisoners, needlessly elevating an obscure issue into the public debate as a purity test, despite the fact that current law already gave prisoners access to gender-affirming care. This became a major line of attack for Mr. Trump in the closing weeks of this year’s election.
But, faced with an avalanche of attacks, the Democrats had little to say.
“One of the mysteries of this election,” Helen Lewis wrote in The Atlantic, “is how the Democrats approached polling day with a set of policies on gender identity that they were neither proud to champion—nor prepared to disown…”
And despite the bad faith and bigotry of Trump’s attacks, Lewis noted, the Democrats had a real problem with the issue:
Biden’s administration has long pushed the new orthodoxy on gender, without ever really explaining to the American people why it matters—or, more crucially, what it actually involves. His officials have advocated for removing lower age limits for gender surgeries for minors….
On sports—an issue seized on by the Trump campaign—Biden’s White House has consistently prioritized gender identity over sex. Last year, the Department of Education proposed regulations establishing “that policies violate Title IX when they categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are.” Schools were, however, allowed to limit participation in specific situations. (In April, with the election looming, this part of the Title IX revision was put on hold.)
Harris went into the campaign tied to the Biden administration’s positions, and did not have the courage, or strategic sense, to reject them publicly. Nor did she defend them.
We know the rest.
But this brings us back to my question: Will Democrats be able to talk about this?
Cancelling Moulton
A few days ago, Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton suggested that the party needed to change its approach to hot-button social issues. In an interview with The New York Times, Moulton said: “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
The response was explosive, with many on the left calling for Moulton to be cancelled for his heresy. USA Today reported:
Kyle Davis, a city councilor in Moulton's hometown of Salem, called for his resignation in several social media posts.
The Boston Globe also reported that Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo and the town's School Committee issued an email to the city’s residents, saying Moulton’s comments “do not reflect our values.”
Mr. Moulton’s campaign manager resigned in protest. The Democratic governor of Massachusetts rebuked him. And the chair of the political science department at Tufts University threatened to block his students from interning in Mr. Moulton’s office.
Tufts University later clarified that it would not cut ties with Moulton’s office, but the student newspaper demanded his excommunication.
As Tufts students, we believe that cutting ties with Moulton’s office is not a suppression of speech. In fact, it is quite the opposite. It is our way of expressing our disgust with Moulton’s brazen scapegoating of an already oppressed community. We must ask Tufts and the Department of Political Science to stand with Professor Art’s decision and end their relationship with Moulton’s office.
Moulton has refused to back down.
"This is everything that's wrong with this cancel culture,” Moulton said on "Morning Joe" responding to news that Tufts University no longer wants to let students intern with his office. "When people like this in our party try to cancel me or whoever else, they are also talking down and canceling the views of a vast majority of Americans.”
“We did not lose the 2024 election because of any trans person or issue,” Moulton insists. “We lost, in part, because we shame and belittle too many opinions held by too many voters and that needs to stop.”2
But it is not clear that it will, in fact, stop, because it’s not clear that Democrats are prepared to defy “the groups.” Those elite activist groups continue to dominate the party, even though they do not represent the grassroots Democratic voter.3 Even so, they continue to push the party to embrace positions that are electorally toxic.
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“The tragedy of this subject,” Helen Lewis wrote, “is that compromise positions are available that would please most voters and would stop a wider backlash against gender nonconformity that manifests as punitive laws in red states.”
America is a more open-minded country than its toughest critics believe—the latest research shows that about as many people believe that society has not gone far enough in accepting trans people as think that it has gone too far. Delaware has just elected the first transgender member of Congress, Sarah McBride.
But most voters think that biological sex is real, and that it matters in law and policy. Instructing them to believe otherwise, and not to ask any questions, is a doomed strategy. By shedding their most extreme positions, the Democrats will be better placed to defend transgender Americans who want to live their lives in peace.
NOTE: I’m very interested in hearing your feedback… The comments are wide open…
Your Sunday Dogs
Fern and Leo know there is chicken.
Via Forbes: “Gorka has also faced criticism for appearing to support a far-right Hungarian political group the U.S. says is linked to the Nazis.”…
While attending Trump’s Inaugural Ball on Jan. 20, 2017, Gorka was pictured wearing a medal associated with Vitezi Rend, a Hungarian national group the State Department designated as having worked under the direction of Germany’s Nazi government. The group was founded as the Vitez Order in 1920 as a Hungarian nationalist group that contested the country’s communist rule, and is now recognized as a far-right group with antisemitic views. Vitezi Rend spokesperson Andras Horvaz told NBC News the group was “really proud” Gorka wore the medal, while some members told the outlet Gorka was a well-known associate of the group.
Moulton was not the only Democrat to incur the rath of activists. The chair of the Texas Democratic Party apologized after his comments set off a firestorm. He also resigned after the election defeats.
Since Trump came to power, they have stayed relevant and well-funded by taking maximalist positions on gender—partly in reaction to divisive red-state laws, such as complete bans on gender medicine for minors. The ACLU, GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, and other similar groups have done so safe in the knowledge that they answer to their (mostly wealthy, well-educated) donors, rather than a more diverse and skeptical electorate.
My critique of Moulton did not involve his reading of the electorate, which I find generally correct. It’s the fact that he, and so many others (including yourself, Charlie), believe that it’s Democrats who are placing undue emphasis on these honestly trivial cultural issues.
Most of us, I maintain, keep these things in proper perspective. It’s the culture warriors of the right who constantly gin up all these moral panics that otherwise left alone would matter only to a microscopic portion of voters.
The Harris campaign, and the party in general, needed (and needs) to punch back hard against these fake issues. Something along the lines of: “Why are Republicans making a big deal of something that affects almost no one, while refusing to address the real problems we all face? Why won’t they talk about what’s really important? Because they have no answers.”
Trans people are a miniscule fraction of the population. I support them not because of any of the reasons Charlie et al think - but because laws targeting them in red states look like Nuremberg laws to me. And that endangers all "the Other."