Should Democrats Throw Trans People Under the Bus? - Julia Serano - Medium (original) (raw)

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…