I think it’s certain that *some* R legislators (and regular people, including some GC people who lean left) feel moral disgust toward transgender people. There was the legislator (in Florida?) who called trans people imps and demons. There are still plenty of people who act as though they feel threatened by gender nonconformity. Some rel…
I think it’s certain that *some* R legislators (and regular people, including some GC people who lean left) feel moral disgust toward transgender people. There was the legislator (in Florida?) who called trans people imps and demons. There are still plenty of people who act as though they feel threatened by gender nonconformity. Some religious people believe that gnc is contrary to God’s will.
There are surely R politicians who see that the issues they are now highlighting (NOT the bathroom bans of a few years ago) are effective wedge issues.
And there are definitely R politicians and many voters - including lots of Dems like me - who bear no animus but have grave, principled, and compassionate reservations about youth transition, males in female sports, and the erasure of women’s distinctive needs and embodied experiences across the lifespan.
This is an effective wedge issue because of the size of the third group. Polling data very clearly shows that the majority of Americans believe the trans people deserve protections against discrimination in housing, education, and the like. A majority also opposes policies that require us to ignore everything we know about sexed bodies. The Dems see that trans women in women’s sports is a loser with voters, but they are dithering about how to respond. They count on few voters being attuned to the issues in prisons and shelters. And they have dug in so hard on the trans activist position on youth gender medicine that it’s hard to imagine how they can row back from it.
"The Dems see that trans women in women’s sports is a loser with voters, but they are dithering about how to respond. They count on few voters being attuned to the issues in prisons and shelters. And they have dug in so hard on the trans activist position on youth gender medicine that it’s hard to imagine how they can row back from it."
Yep. It's going to bite them in the ass very hard.
Democratic strategy on the women's sports issue is to imply or just directly claim that the GOP wants young girls subjected to gender testing to play Middle School no-cut Basketball, repeat mantras and then change the subject as fast as they can. I've seen them deploy this tactic in interviews (most notably on Bill Maher's show) and I've seen it repeated by many Democrats in my circle. Given that most of my circle are people who either are Democrats or are too left wing to be Democrats, that's not a small number of people.
On the larger issue, they just want to deploy the tactic of calling anyone who has any questions, dissent or concerns a right wing bigot. For good measure, they then paint dissenters as white nationalists (even when the dissenters aren't white).
I am still very much on their call, email and mailing lists, both the public facing ones and locally the internal pleas for getting the party faithful to turn up (time and money and endorsements) for the primaries early. I have considered unsubscribing but I rather like to be able to peek. And it was such a commitment of mine for so long it was hard admit that I wasn't onboard with the Democratic party anymore.
I've walked a lot of precincts, knocked on a lot of doors, hosted and attended events, convened caucuses, dutifully attended conventions at the local level on up. All for Democrats and almost always for the left wing of the Democratic party. I can't convey how big of a change it is that I don't think I can vote for Biden next year. This week, I signed up to get campaign updates from the moderate GOP candidate for Governor. I won't vote for Trump but I might be able to vote for some Republicans. My mother is rolling over in her proverbial grave right now.
If the Democrats wanted to design a way to lose support from their party faithful, they really could not have done any better than cook up this nonsense.
Like you, TessK, I feel I have no political party home. And political parties have no real positional core (ie re Dems -children are not fully responsible for their actions until their brains are fully developed except for gender related issues).
I will be voting for the least crazy candidates. Fortunately, I live in a BIG BLUE state so my presidential vote does not count anyway.
Thank you! Same on my 2024 voting plan. I'm in a blue state and I don't feel obliged to vote against anyone. If there are no qualified or non-crazy options, then I will just not vote in that race. In a Biden-Trump rematch, I just don't see the point of voting. If I lived in a state that matter to the outcome, I would likely reach a different conclusion.
It's fascinating that you are so invested in this DemExit narrative (despite, as I pointed out elsewhere on this thread, just being a straightforward conservative in most respects, i.e. someone who I would typically expect to vote Republican ex ante); I suppose you see it as an effective means of converting more people to the transphobic cause you have now espoused. Conversion narratives are always effective yarns.
That being said, there's zero evidence that transphobia is an electorally effective strategy, and lots of evidence that it is not:
The fact is that outside of a very small number of, basically, obsessive busybodies, most people vote in elections based on tribal loyalties, vibes, or, to the extent they think about policy at all, economic or mixed economic/social issues like healthcare and abortion rights, not weirdo obsessions with a tiny minority of people. Abortion, in particular, absolutely dwarfs trans policies in political importance, which I know will upset you given your anti-abortion views, but it's true.
When Roe was overturned, I said it was the single best thing that could possibly have happened for the Democrats’ political chances.
My moral issues with abortion are rooted in deeply personal experiences but as I have stated here, I am actually not comfortable with fully banning abortion. I think it’s incumbent on pro-life people to help make a world where women have better options than abortion at all stages of the process.
I am eternally grateful that I didn’t fall for the pro-abortion pressure I faced as a pregnant 22 year old college student. I’m driving that child to college this week and it’s a happiness like no other to have the privilege to be his mom. I am grateful for the generations that my mother created when she made a powerful choice to have my brother in the bleakest of circumstances.
Again, my actual thoughts are complicated and seemingly not something that you are able to compute.
Parental rights, education and pushing gender ideology are absolutely issues that make the Democrats more vulnerable than they need to be. And they know it.
`There are surely R politicians who see that the issues they are now highlighting (NOT the bathroom bans of a few years ago) are effective wedge issues.'
This has not stopped Republicans in Iowa and Florida from re-instituting those bans.
I think it’s certain that *some* R legislators (and regular people, including some GC people who lean left) feel moral disgust toward transgender people. There was the legislator (in Florida?) who called trans people imps and demons. There are still plenty of people who act as though they feel threatened by gender nonconformity. Some religious people believe that gnc is contrary to God’s will.
There are surely R politicians who see that the issues they are now highlighting (NOT the bathroom bans of a few years ago) are effective wedge issues.
And there are definitely R politicians and many voters - including lots of Dems like me - who bear no animus but have grave, principled, and compassionate reservations about youth transition, males in female sports, and the erasure of women’s distinctive needs and embodied experiences across the lifespan.
This is an effective wedge issue because of the size of the third group. Polling data very clearly shows that the majority of Americans believe the trans people deserve protections against discrimination in housing, education, and the like. A majority also opposes policies that require us to ignore everything we know about sexed bodies. The Dems see that trans women in women’s sports is a loser with voters, but they are dithering about how to respond. They count on few voters being attuned to the issues in prisons and shelters. And they have dug in so hard on the trans activist position on youth gender medicine that it’s hard to imagine how they can row back from it.
"The Dems see that trans women in women’s sports is a loser with voters, but they are dithering about how to respond. They count on few voters being attuned to the issues in prisons and shelters. And they have dug in so hard on the trans activist position on youth gender medicine that it’s hard to imagine how they can row back from it."
Yep. It's going to bite them in the ass very hard.
Democratic strategy on the women's sports issue is to imply or just directly claim that the GOP wants young girls subjected to gender testing to play Middle School no-cut Basketball, repeat mantras and then change the subject as fast as they can. I've seen them deploy this tactic in interviews (most notably on Bill Maher's show) and I've seen it repeated by many Democrats in my circle. Given that most of my circle are people who either are Democrats or are too left wing to be Democrats, that's not a small number of people.
On the larger issue, they just want to deploy the tactic of calling anyone who has any questions, dissent or concerns a right wing bigot. For good measure, they then paint dissenters as white nationalists (even when the dissenters aren't white).
I am still very much on their call, email and mailing lists, both the public facing ones and locally the internal pleas for getting the party faithful to turn up (time and money and endorsements) for the primaries early. I have considered unsubscribing but I rather like to be able to peek. And it was such a commitment of mine for so long it was hard admit that I wasn't onboard with the Democratic party anymore.
I've walked a lot of precincts, knocked on a lot of doors, hosted and attended events, convened caucuses, dutifully attended conventions at the local level on up. All for Democrats and almost always for the left wing of the Democratic party. I can't convey how big of a change it is that I don't think I can vote for Biden next year. This week, I signed up to get campaign updates from the moderate GOP candidate for Governor. I won't vote for Trump but I might be able to vote for some Republicans. My mother is rolling over in her proverbial grave right now.
If the Democrats wanted to design a way to lose support from their party faithful, they really could not have done any better than cook up this nonsense.
Like you, TessK, I feel I have no political party home. And political parties have no real positional core (ie re Dems -children are not fully responsible for their actions until their brains are fully developed except for gender related issues).
I will be voting for the least crazy candidates. Fortunately, I live in a BIG BLUE state so my presidential vote does not count anyway.
Thank you! Same on my 2024 voting plan. I'm in a blue state and I don't feel obliged to vote against anyone. If there are no qualified or non-crazy options, then I will just not vote in that race. In a Biden-Trump rematch, I just don't see the point of voting. If I lived in a state that matter to the outcome, I would likely reach a different conclusion.
It's fascinating that you are so invested in this DemExit narrative (despite, as I pointed out elsewhere on this thread, just being a straightforward conservative in most respects, i.e. someone who I would typically expect to vote Republican ex ante); I suppose you see it as an effective means of converting more people to the transphobic cause you have now espoused. Conversion narratives are always effective yarns.
That being said, there's zero evidence that transphobia is an electorally effective strategy, and lots of evidence that it is not:
https://www.ettingermentum.news/p/the-continuing-electoral-history
The fact is that outside of a very small number of, basically, obsessive busybodies, most people vote in elections based on tribal loyalties, vibes, or, to the extent they think about policy at all, economic or mixed economic/social issues like healthcare and abortion rights, not weirdo obsessions with a tiny minority of people. Abortion, in particular, absolutely dwarfs trans policies in political importance, which I know will upset you given your anti-abortion views, but it's true.
When Roe was overturned, I said it was the single best thing that could possibly have happened for the Democrats’ political chances.
My moral issues with abortion are rooted in deeply personal experiences but as I have stated here, I am actually not comfortable with fully banning abortion. I think it’s incumbent on pro-life people to help make a world where women have better options than abortion at all stages of the process.
I am eternally grateful that I didn’t fall for the pro-abortion pressure I faced as a pregnant 22 year old college student. I’m driving that child to college this week and it’s a happiness like no other to have the privilege to be his mom. I am grateful for the generations that my mother created when she made a powerful choice to have my brother in the bleakest of circumstances.
Again, my actual thoughts are complicated and seemingly not something that you are able to compute.
Parental rights, education and pushing gender ideology are absolutely issues that make the Democrats more vulnerable than they need to be. And they know it.
"fully banning"
Just leaving that phrase out there, no particular reason.
`There are surely R politicians who see that the issues they are now highlighting (NOT the bathroom bans of a few years ago) are effective wedge issues.'
This has not stopped Republicans in Iowa and Florida from re-instituting those bans.