To National Democrats: Don't capitulate to Trump and his ilk
We have seen the Democratic brass do a full 180 on a whole host of things, with trans rights being one of them.
In the days and weeks after the election, we saw the Democratic Party look inward and try to figure out exactly what went wrong after the 2024 election. You know, like try and give an autopsy report of sorts. Figure out what went wrong, and learn in time for the midterms.
Which seems fine, but they handled this so wrong. It started out with Representatives Seth Moulton and Tom Suozzi both saying transphobic statements, and the latter saying that the Democrats need to “stop pandering to the far left” when it comes to trans rights, with him saying to the New York Times:
You mean to tell me that, after looking inward and wondering “hey guys, lets see what we did wrong here”, you come to the conclusion that you are just going to kick trans people to the curb? And Rep. Moulton echoed Suozzi’s statements, with him saying to the NYT a few days later:
Quick reminder, they both said this, most likely knowing full well they had a trans colleague, (Rep. Sarah McBride, whom we will talk about in a minute), who won her House seat on election night, that was less than 2 months away from being sworn in. But back on topic. First off, how is that a universal challenge? Trans athletes? What? I know the next sentence is far far worse than the first, but how is this a universal challenge that many Americans face? There are so few trans athletes in the NCAA, and potentially even fewer, in high school sports, so how is this universal?
What a way to start, huh? So much for an autopsy.
Anyways, as if it couldn’t get any worse, we were seeing better examples of lawmakers standing up for trans rights in not only Washington, but across the country.
Speaking of, before Rep McBride even was sworn in, Republicans were already scheming.
On November 19th, two weeks after the election and Rep McBride’s historic win in Delaware, Reps Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene both became outraged at the thought of a trans woman using the bathroom, with Mace taking it as far as to introduce a rule that would flat out ban Rep McBride from using the women’s bathroom on Capitol grounds.
Not a single Democrat came to her aid, and McBride took the high road, saying:
“We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care and child care, not manufacturing culture wars,” she added. “Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on,” she said.
Now, this sparked ire within the trans community, and rightfully so. She was elected to give trans people a voice, to stand up against these fascist asshats, and when their ire goes down on her, she doesn’t even fight?
Now, at the time, I decided to hold back judgement on not just her, but the party as a whole. She and the party could have very well been doing a 200 IQ move. I even wrote about this as it was happening.
The party did say they were picking their battles, right?
Then Mace kept going, kept spouting transphobic shit, and nothing. Nothing from the Democratic Party, nothing from Sarah, nothing. But we’ll table that for later on.
Zooming out to Washington at large for a moment, as Elon Musk started to make his presence known and releasing his flying monkeys into governmental agencies, majority of the Democratic brass, like Hakeem Jefferies, didn’t do anything substantive other than taking a press tour.
In fact, early on when Musk was crippling USAID, the loudest of loud voices in the party, AOC, Bernie, Chris Murphy, etc. Those were really the only really loud voices that we heard when Musk was trying to crush USAID under his foot. We rarely heard from the brass of the Democratic Party, and even when we did, they would never offer any solution of substance.
It got to a point where Hakeem Jefferies even compared the party’s strategy of picking their battles to Arron Judge, Yankees outhitter:
“He waits for the right one — and then he swings,” Jeffries explained, seemingly referring to Judge in the below clip. “We’re not going to swing at every pitch. We’re going to swing at the ones that matter for the American people.”
Its safe to say that this strategy, didn’t, and still isn’t working.
But, that’s a discussion for a later date. Lets get back to Rep. McBride.
As Nancy Mace, and by extension, the Republican Party, became more hateful towards her, with a laughable AI image by Ms. Mace, and the right just lambasting her for reading to children.
Even after all of this, the majority of Democrats did not come to Sarah’s aid. She didn’t even help herself. And remember when I said that we were seeing better examples across the country? Well, while looking on social media, I kept seeing many names pop up, but one stood out to me:
Zooey Zephyr.
Majority of us in the trans community, love Zephyr’s fire and longed for the same thing out of McBride. We loved the calm but fiery demeanor she had. As opposed to McBride, who hasn’t brought even a tenth of that fire. She has hid, trying not to be apart of a “culture war” when its not a culture war, its a fight for trans people’s very right to exist.
Her hiding helps no one.
I covered this a few days ago, but when a transphobic bill was brought forth in the Montana legislature, Rep Zephyr had this to say:
"Here I am again to rise on another bill targeting the LGBTQ+ community," she said, exasperated. "At its very core, drag is art. It is very beautiful art. It has a deep history in this country, and it is important to my community. You know, if you are a woman in this body wearing a suit today, you are in some way challenging gender norms that existed long ago… There were three-article-of-clothing laws 50 years ago that said if you wore three articles of clothing that were indicative of the opposite gender, they could stop you, arrest you… it was those laws that led to the police raiding an LGBTQ+ bar that led to the Stonewall riots, one of the most important civil rights moments in my community’s history," she began.
“When the sponsor closed on this bill, he said, this bill is needed… and I quote his words… ‘because transgenderism is a fetish based on crossdressing.’ And I am here to stand before the body and say that my life is not a fetish. My existence is not a fetish. I was proud within a month ago to have my son up in the gallery here. Many of you on the other side met him. When I go to walk him to school, that’s not a lascivious display. That is not a fetish. That is my family. This is what these bills are trying to come after… not obscene shows in front of children, we have the Miller test for that, we have laws for that. This is a way to target the trans community, and that is in my opinion, and in the speaker’s own words.”
It doesn’t even need to be fiery, just to get the message across that, no, I will not let you hurt my community.
Now, I was under the belief that at the time, Sarah McBride was judged too harshly. We hadn’t yet been given a chance to see her voting stance when it came to trans issues, so why should we be judging her?
Even after the right started dogpiling on her and she was taking the high road, I still tried to rationalize it, which I now know wasn’t the best, especially with how things are quickly escalating when it comes to anti trans legislation. (For God’s sake, we saw a law in Texas where it would classify being trans as fraud)
So just having someone take the high road and brush it off as a distraction, especially someone like McBride, who not only represents her constituents in The First State, but someone who is also giving trans people a seat at the table is infuriating.
Now, am I going to outright say that Sarah McBride is a weak coward? Not yet.
What I will say is that she got screwed by her circumstances and isn’t trying to fix them. Coming into a legislature that hates you, for simply being you and is trying to pass laws that hurt you and your community, and before your first day, your already getting tomatoes thrown at you? That’s bad enough, but then not doing anything to try and fix your circumstances is just shooting yourself in the foot.
I did say that I wont resort to calling her a weak coward, but this, not doing anything in the face of Republican attacks, essentially telling them that she wont do anything about Republican trans attacks, isn’t a good look. Now, she could be playing some 200 IQ move. Don’t fight in public, but raise hell in private. (Now that I think about it, that seems backwards as all hell.) Although the Democratic party did show a spine and stopped a trans sports ban in the Senate, this strategy does not seem sustainable.
I say all of this to say: Don’t capitulate to MAGA and invite them into the party. We are already seeing examples of Dems completely betraying the party and having tea and crumpets with bigots. Take Gavin Newsom, the California governor. He recently started up a podcast and brings on noted transphobe Charlie Kirk and just completely agrees with him. On top of this, Democrats recently had a retreat and tried to plot the comeback of their party, with these takeaways:
The party should “embrace patriotism, community, and traditional American imagery”;
Democrats should “ban far-left candidate questionnaires and refuse to participate in forums that create ideological purity tests” and “move away from the dominance of small-dollar donors whose preferences may not align with the broader electorate”;
They should “push back against far-left staffers and groups that exert a disproportionate influence on policy and messaging” ;
Candidates should “get out of elite circles and into real communities (e.g., tailgates, gun shows, local restaurants, churches)”; and
The party needs to “own the failures of Democratic governance in large cities and commit to improving local government
Oh God. I'm not even going to seriously break this down, as it's just bad from top to bottom. This is just an attempt to cut the Left out of the party and align themselves with Republicans because they feel that them supporting trans people cost them the election. (which it didn’t)
Back on topic, this shows why the Democrats need a spine, especially when it comes to trans rights. The Republican’s are raging attacks on us, and the Democrats are sitting idly by, dismissing it as a distraction? You have members of your own party, casting the trans community to the side, and aren't coming to the aid of your trans colleague, who’s getting dogpiled?
In short: Don't surrender, don't embrace it, because in the end, if you embrace it, you will become the the monster you hate. You will look in the mirror and see all that effort that you put into destroying the MAGA monster, if you embrace it into the party, you would have become that monster. And democracy would not be better for it.