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“Donald Trump and other GOP candidates are increasingly targeting transgender people in the election campaign’s closing days, invoking them at rallies and pouring millions into advertising tying Democrats to transgender rights…
“In one ad by a Trump-aligned super PAC, an image of Harris talking to a drag queen is followed by a narrator intoning ‘Crazy liberal Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.’” Washington Post
The left criticizes the ads, and urges Democrats to defend transgender rights.
“Transphobia has historically been an election loser for Republicans dating to 2016, when then-North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, who had signed the now-infamous trans bathroom bill, lost in a red wave election. In the 2022 midterms, conservative groups spent millions on anti-trans ads, only to get wiped out at the ballot box…
“[Yet] A few weeks ago, an unnamed Harris adviser speaking to NBC News expressed admiration for the effectiveness of Trump’s anti-trans ad, if not the content, by describing it as ‘a killer ad.’ The Washington Examiner reported last month that the Harris campaign had consulted the U.K. Labour Party for strategy help. That’s the party responsible for banning puberty blockers for all trans youth in Britain…
“What makes the Democrats’ seeming capitulation worse is that there’s little evidence that any of the anti-trans ads are breaking through with voters. Polling shows that trans issues are of little importance except to a tiny handful of voters… The presidential polls have been tightening lately, as happens in most elections in October, but that’s not the fault of trans people or the result of Trump’s transphobic ads.”
Katelyn Burns, MSNBC
“As with abortion, a compromise position on gender exists that would satisfy a plurality of voters. Essentially: Let people live however makes them happy, but be cautious about medicalizing children and insist on fair competition in female sports…
“But Harris has been unwilling or unable to articulate it, and candidates in downballot races have followed her lead. You can see why: Even as polls suggest that many voters are more hesitant than the median Democratic activist, any backsliding by candidates from the progressive line alienates influential LGBTQ groups…
“Presumably her campaign believes that every day spent talking about gender medicine for teens is one not spent discussing Trump’s mental fitness or disdain for democratic norms. In the absence of her articulating a compromise position, however, the Republicans are defining the contours of the debate in ways that could prove fateful—for Harris, for trans people, and for the country as a whole.”
Helen Lewis, The Atlantic
“Republicans are no strangers to using a marginalized group of people to stoke fear. We’ve seen how they talk about immigrants in dehumanizing ways. The trans panic talking points are just more hate. The GOP will continue spreading hatred of transgender people on the road to Election Day. The left can’t keep pretending the issue doesn't exist… Even just a point on its campaign platform page would be a step in the right direction. More important, it would show Republicans that they can’t just attack a group of people without repercussions.”
Sara Pequeño, USA Today
The right praises the ads, arguing that they highlight Democrats’ extreme views.
The right praises the ads, arguing that they highlight Democrats’ extreme views.
“People first took it as Trumpian exaggeration when he said on the debate stage, ‘She did things that nobody would ever think of. Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison. This is a radical left liberal that would do this.’ But Trump’s got the goods, and Harris served it up on a silver platter. In 2019, her first presidential campaign said she’d do exactly that in answer to an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire…
“The ad includes a clip of Harris herself… pledging ‘surgery for prisoners — every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access.’… Democratic partisans have cried foul at Trump pressing a culture-war hot button when bigger issues like the economy, national security and the rule of law are at stake. But that rings hollow when Harris and Tim Walz can’t say three words without talking about abortion, which has been the centerpiece of most Democratic ads this cycle.”
Dan McLaughlin, New York Post
“Last year 69% of Americans told Gallup that ‘transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender.’ This isn’t bigotry. For most Americans it’s a matter of fairness, as well as the equal opportunity for women in sports enshrined in Title IX. Not long ago most Democrats believed in that principle. But these days the hard edge of the transgender movement has dictated that its view of gender must be imposed nationwide…
“Media conformity is one reason the transgender sports issue is catching Democrats by surprise. The press portrays any dissent on the issue as out of political bounds and gives it no coverage or dismisses as benighted bias what millions of Americans view as common sense. This means voters may hear about it only when a politician makes it a campaign issue, and it might cost Democrats control of Congress this year.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“The implacable conundrum that Democrats face on this issue is that in order to come to the conclusion that men who identify as trans should not be competing against women, you have to acknowledge that they are not actually women, and according to the left, that makes one a horrible bigot… The Trump campaign and Republicans writ large know they have a winner on this issue.”
David Marcus, Fox News
“It’s one thing to say people should be tolerant of the choices of consenting adults; it’s another to say that minors must have access to life-altering so-called ‘gender-affirming’ treatments. It’s one thing to say everyone should live and let live; it’s another to say that biological males must participate in female sports, no matter how manifestly unfair it is to the girls and women. There were plenty of flashing red lights for Democrats to heed.”
Rich Lowry, New York Post
