I've seen a depressing trend of Democratic politicians embracing anti trans talking points and compromising gender affirming care for young people. This is extremely concerning as states and the federal government are undermining access to care now more than ever. Democrats standing by trans people has far more dire consequences now than ever, yet we're being treated as politically disposable by people who used to campaign on lgbtq issues like Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg.
I can't say I'm surprised. Liberal papers like the New York Times has been uncritically promoting unscientific transphobia for years that claims alternatives exist to gender affirming care. My guess is that people see a person transitioning as an unfortunate thing, desperately wishing there was another way. They ignore the fact that gender affirming care is both the best treatment for dysphoria, and one of the most successful treatments for any mental condition ever discovered.
To put it simply, making gender affirming care harder to obtain for kids will kill many of them. Kids being kept from care by their parents already drives people to suicide, and a slimy politician preventing supportive parents from helping their kids will do the same. Every time I see people claim these guys are our best shot at beating fascism, I die inside. I have no doubt that they'll eventually axe care for all adults like everyone who was originally "worried about fairness in sports" is currently pushing for. The only way they won't is if we make it a costly issue for them.
I think it's more that people think winning is more important than performative losing. It's not pragmatic to promote talking points that hurt your own cause.
For example, I'd wager that cutting hundreds of billions from Medicaid will hurt the general population AND the trans population far more than gender affirming care for kids or trans rights in sports would benefit trans people.
And consider this, every time we lose, it's going to get worse and worse and keep shifting the Overton Window to the right.
Are we supposed to pretend that strategy and tactics aren't applicable to politics? Winning the broader war wins many smaller battles by default.
I'm looking at the current Democratic strategy of moving to the right, and continuing to lose.
You are correct that strategy and tactics are applicable. Maybe if the Democrats want to win, they should avoid their losing strategy.
The US democrat party has a huge problem. That it is in the US. Therefore, there can only be 2 parties. Yet, the spectrum of politicians is huge. It's big enough for it to be hated by everyone.
The right will hate the democrats because they are woke and young and pro-trans, pro-brown, pro-immigrant.
And the left will hate the democrats because they are fascists, old, anti-trans, racists and anti-immigrants.
The media can pick and choose what democrat they want to demonize, and that ends up hurting the entire party. The left will hate the rightmost democrats, and the right will do the same with the leftmost ones.
Which ends up with conservatives voting for the republicans, and progressives not even bothering to vote because they are too much to the right.
They only win sometimes because the republicans are so ridiculously horrible that any good big policy will land the democrats the white house. But good luck getting that whole spectrum + their donors to all agree on one good big policy.
I think you are glossing over a big part of the picture: Where the Democratic leadership gaslights their voters, and pushes against popular, leftist candidates, and popular, leftist policies.
Yes, the Democratic party has a huge problem: They actively fight against the politicians and policies that their voters want.
To be fair. They have tried with what they believe Americans want.
It's been on the decline lately, but the last ~10 years there has been a big trend of "Americans wants black women". If a movie had a group of at least 4 people, a black woman was one of them. If an ad had 4 people in quick succession, a black woman was one of them.
So they saw this opportunity and decided that the most important thing would be having the first black woman president. They might just be incredibly bad at seeing what the voters actually want. And of course, going for cultural-left made them lose against the most incompetent opponent.
Or they might just be physically unable to be an economically left party, so they go with cultural left in order to differentiate themselves with the fascism party.
No they didn't. Americans have very clearly been saying that they want someone who is not a status-quo, neoliberal politician, who is only in it to help out their donors. The Democrats keep saying "Nah, we're just gonna pick the candidate for you."
They didn't do this because they are bad at reading what people want, they did this because their core philosophy is directly oppositional to what Americans want.
What are you talking about? I've never heard anyone say that. It might shock you to hear this, but movies aren't where you find out what voters want.
No, they saw the opportunity to have another corporate shill who won't rock the boat and took it. She just happened to be the VP at the time, so they could justify not having an actual primary.
No, them picking terrible, center-right candidates, running on terrible, center-right policies, and openly telling their voter-base to sit down and shut up is what made them lose.
They aren't physically unable, they chose to be bound by what their donors tell them.
almost as if the Democrats should run an actual Leftist candidate so the Left would turn out for them.
worked for the Republicans. the Right turned out for Trump after the party withered under decades of neocons.
That's where the next problem comes in. America has a fuckton of fascists.
Turning to the right in a right environment will always be more successful than turning to the left.
The only way out is to advocate for leftwing policies without stating they are left-wing. Whatever is labeled "woke" in America is probably not going to gain them many votes.
is Mamdani woke? is Luigi woke?
they're both extremely polarizing, hated by the establishment and extraordinarily popular. kinda like Trump was, actually.
I haven't looked into it, but mamdani is probably extremely popular in NY, but hated by the MAGA crowd. Since they probably heard him from fox news than from his policies.
I haven't heard Luigi be called woke. But what he did is not (just) culturally left, it is economically left. Which is what I think the left should focus on. Culturally left is "woke" because that is what the commies do in their cities, "real hardworking manly Americans" don't have trans people in their rural towns, but they do have bloodsucking healthcare companies.
Listening to the children's feelings is "woke". Increasing the taxes on the billionaires to deliver drinkable water to Americans is not.