Should Democrats Throw Trans People Under the Bus?

Here’s Why It Would Be Bad Politics

As soon as vice president Kamala Harris lost the presidential election last week, pundits and politicians from across the spectrum were quick to proclaim that it never would have happened if only she had more closely adhered to their preferred positions.

I’ve seen progressives argue (perhaps correctly, perhaps not) that if only Harris had strongly opposed the war in Gaza, or hadn’t embraced the Cheney’s, she would have turned out more voters. Senator Bernie Sanders released a statement claiming, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

Of course, others are making the opposite case, arguing that the Harris campaign didn’t do enough to reach out to centrist and right-leaning voters, or that her campaign was “too woke.” The latter strikes me as utterly ludicrous given that she fiercely steered clear of any discussions about identity, racism, sexism, and so on. Nor did she mention “defund the police,” “toxic masculinity,” or any of the other phrases that anti-woke pundits relentlessly harp on.

An emerging talking point that generally falls under the “too woke” umbrella is that Democrats lost because they have been too supportive of trans rights, and if they wish to succeed in the future, they should abandon that position. This idea has been touted by members of Biden’s inner circle, Atlantic columnists on The Bulwark Podcast, and incoming Democratic congressmen.

The day after the election, prominent pundit Matthew Yglesias (who has thrown trans people under the bus before) posted nine principles he thought “Common Sense Democrats” should follow moving forward, one being, “While race is a social construct, biological sex is not.” As I explain in this video, “biological sex” is both an explicitly anti-trans framing and one that is not supported by actual biology (and I should know because I’m a biologist).

Now, I could make a moral argument as to why Democrats shouldn’t throw trans people under the bus: We are a small minority group who has been subjected to increasing GOP demagoguery. Shouldn’t we protect those who are most vulnerable in our society—whether it be trans people, Haitian immigrants, or other unfairly targeted marginalized groups—rather than giving in to right-wing hate campaigns?

I could also make an empirical argument for why we shouldn’t abandon trans people. In fact, I’ve already done this in a series of essays (drawing heavily from peer-reviewed research studies) showing that anti-trans talking points about sports, gender-affirming care, public restrooms, detransition, imagined “social contagion” and “gay conversion,” and so on, are not supported by the evidence.

But in this piece, I will be making a purely political argument: Throwing trans people under the bus is bad politics that will ultimately hurt Democrats if they choose to pursue it.

Before making that case, it’s necessary to clear up a misconception that seems to be driving much of this debate: Kamala Harris didn’t even run on trans issues! In fact, as journalist Katelyn Burns has pointed out, Harris and the DNC seemed to go out of their way to avoid mentioning trans people at all.

Some of the confusion here is due to Trump campaign ads claiming that “Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners,” which made it sound as though this was some new policy that she was personally rolling out. (You’d think political commentators would know better than to take political attack ads at face value.) In reality, it’s simply the law that if prisoners require medical attention, then the state must provide it. And all the major medical organizations agree that gender-affirming care is necessary care. This is why, when Fox News’s Bret Baier questioned Harris about this issue, she replied: “I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed.”  

In other words, the reason we’re talking about trans people right now has nothing to do with anything Democrats or the Harris campaign did, and everything to do with Trump and other Republican candidates spending 215 million dollars on anti-trans political ads this election cycle. But it would be both naive and incurious for us to automatically assume that these ads must have moved voters or swung the election. I mean, there were plenty of other issues at play, not to mention a global anti-incumbent backlash that may have propelled Trump to victory.

Shouldn’t the pundits who propose throwing trans people under the bus provide some sort of evidence that these anti-trans ads are what cost Harris this election?

Don’t hold your breath. They won’t, because all the evidence is against them.

In late October, just before the election, Data for Progress published a poll showing that Democrats and Independents overwhelmingly prefer candidates who support trans rights, reject candidates who support anti-trans legislation, and feel that politicians should spend less time dwelling on this issue. A late September New York Times/Siena battleground state poll showed similar results.

[Post-Publication Note: a poll published after the election by Change Research found that "in eight battleground states (AZ, MI, MT, NV, OH, PA, TX, and WI) ... negative advertisements targeting Democratic U.S. Senate candidates on transgender issues failed to impact support for these candidates, and voters who saw these ads found them intensely off-putting."]

These polls are consistent with what Josh “Ettingermentum” found in his exhaustive “Modern Electoral History of Transphobia” series (Parts 1, 2, and 3), which analyzed how GOP campaigns that center trans issues have fared and found that they’ve been a flat-out failure at the ballot box. To paraphrase Ettingermentum’s conclusions, those who claim that trans people are a political liability for Democrats have either not bothered to seriously examine the issue or are disingenuously promoting their own preferred anti-trans positions.

If all this is true, then why did the Trump campaign spend all that money on anti-trans ads? The most likely explanation is that they were simply trying to whip up their own base, which includes many social conservatives who are strongly opposed to trans people. Consistent with this, throughout this election political commentators were routinely expressing surprise at how Trump wasn’t doing anything to moderate his message or to reach out to mainstream voters. All he did was throw red meat at his MAGA base. We should view Trump’s anti-trans ads in this light. Perhaps it helped him turn out more Republicans, or maybe it didn’t. Either way, it’s not a strategy that Democrats can replicate if they’re hoping to bring out their base and/or win over swing voters.

So that’s the case for why publicly rejecting trans people won’t help Democrats make any gains in the electorate. But we should also be asking: Is there a potential political downside to throwing trans people under the proverbial bus?

Statistics show that trans adults comprise about 0.6% of the U.S. population. This may not seem like much at first glance—indeed, that relatively low number may lead some politicians and pundits to presume that we are expendable. But if we extrapolate that percentage to current state populations, it equates to roughly 36,000 voters in Wisconsin, 60,000 voters in Michigan, and 78,000 voters in Pennsylvania. In a close swing state election, can Democrats afford to alienate that many voters?

Even if you think the Democratic party can withstand trans voters staying home or casting third-party protest votes, turning against trans people would impact more than just us. Many trans people have cisgender partners, family members, and friends who care about us. According to Pew Research, 42% of Americans know someone who is trans. What message does it send to them if Democrats reject us?

Then there’s the greater LGBTQ+ community, who according to an NBC News Exit Poll represents 8% of all voters, 86% percent of whom voted for Harris this election. In addition to being overwhelmingly supportive of trans people (see e.g., here), cisgender LGB people generally recognize that the political forces who oppose trans folks are gunning for them as well. The red state Republican legislators passing bans on trans athletes and gender-affirming care are also pushing “don’t say gay” laws and anti-drag bans. Religious-right groups like Moms for Liberty don’t merely target trans people, they call all LGBTQ+ people “groomers” and want to censor all LGBTQ+ books.

If Democrats abandon trans people, Republicans will no doubt feel empowered to further expand their attacks on gender and sexual minorities. And cisgender LGB people will take it as a sign that the party has retreated from their issues as well.

Finally, if you think alienating 8% of voters sounds reckless, that number is only going to rise moving forward. While trans adults currently comprise 0.6% of the U.S. population, that same survey finds that this rises to 1.4% for ages 13 to 17. And a recent Gallup poll reported that 19.7% of Generation Z identifies as LGBT in some way. Elsewhere, I’ve written about what’s driving these demographic shifts and increasing right-wing fearmongering about them. While I disagree with conservatives’ non-evidence-based explanations for said shifts, I understand why they feel threatened by them: Over the last couple decades, LGBTQ+ people have become a reliable Democratic voter block, and our numbers continue to grow.

So why on earth would Democrats want to risk losing that?

That’s my argument, hopefully I’ve convinced you.

Having said all that, I will be the first to admit to that Democrats do have a problem here. It doesn’t stem from their support for trans people, but rather their inability to articulate why they are unwilling to throw us under the bus. As we saw with the Harris campaign, if your opponent runs anti-trans attack ads against you and you choose to largely avoid the issue, then they will define your position for you.

Rather than avoid trans people, perhaps consider working with us? Many of us have written at length about why gender-affirming care is necessary, why trans sports bans are unnecessary, why trans people pose no threat in public restrooms, and so on. If you are looking for talking points to allay voters’ concerns, or better yet, to get out in front of the issue, they already exist if you’re willing to look for them.

Or you could take notes from governor Andy Beshear, who won reelection in deep-red Kentucky despite his strong support for LGBTQ+ people and his refusal to abandon trans folks (Ettingermentum’s “Transphobia Fails. Again.” provides a deep-dive into how Beshear successfully responded to the barrage of anti-trans ads he faced).

Or maybe, just maybe, you could go back to calling Republicans’ preoccupation with trans people (and “single cat ladies,” and their many other irrational obsessions) “weird.” That really seemed to be working, not sure why you abandoned it. I wouldn’t be so bold as to speculate that abandoning that approach is why Harris lost the election. But frankly, it seems way more plausible than claims that she lost because of trans people.

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