I bet we could get even more of these conservatives on our side if we promised to repeal gay marriage. Let's try that, too

Ooh, and we could get even more people if we promised to put the Jews in camps

If you aren't going to fight for that "1% of athletes" even though you think they're right just because they're too politically inconvenient then I have zero faith you'll fight for me when I'm politically inconvenient and actually need you to

Liberals will say shit like this and then be baffled why leftists don't want to fall in line behind the party of moderate fascists.

You throw trans people under the bus and you also lose, or at least depress turnout, of everyone who supports trans rights. You also make it clear to every minority that if they're in the crosshairs next, they'll be sacrificed next for the same reasons of political convenience. Jews represented <1% of the population of Weimar Germany, and you may be familiar with a poem about what happened after they came for them.

Furthermore, by ceding ground to the Republicans on this you make them look correct and you discredit your own side for having previously denounced their position as bigoted, which makes people more likely to support Republicans. We saw this happen with the border, when the Democrats turned from "Building the wall is racist" to "We're the ones who are actually going to build the wall," they didn't win over moderate republicans, instead they lost on virtually every demographic. The people who are pro-immigration hated it and the people who are anti-immigration saw their views as being validated and if they had any lingering reservations about voting Republican, those reservations vanished.

Framing politics as a Trolley Problem is extremely stupid, and fundamentally not how the world works, it's liberal brainrot and one of the reasons Democrats are worthless. They literally did this "strategic" sacrifice with Palestinians and immigrants (and it's not like they fully supported trans rights either) and they still ate shit with the worst electoral map since the Republicans took California. When throwing trans people to the wolves doesn't work, which minority will you sacrifice next?

“fight for 1% of athletes vs. lose election to Hitlerguy and harm like 50% of the population”

Republicans who got on the "Freak out about transgender policy" lost their elections in droves in 2022. Several big swing Senate seats flipped because guys like Blake Masters and Herschel Walker couldn't stop screaming slurs at campaign rallies. We've seen Republicans scrub out over and over again by downing too much of their own kool-aid.

Democrats didn't lose 2024 because they were too nice to Transgender people. They lost because they were too nice to Liz Cheney. Harris made a big show of aligning with neoconservatives on everything from immigration and trade to military policies against Russia and China to the stubborn endorsement of the Palestine genocide. All of this shit polled worse than support for Transgender civil rights. Harris had no problem throwing the country in front of Hitlerguy to endorse the tear-gassing of Columbia University and the Kids In Cages on the Texas/Mexico border.

Even then... even if you can argue with a stack full of polling papers that Harris knew with perfect certainty and well in advance of the November vote that an impassioned speech in defense of transgender athletes would doom her campaign and subject the US to Hitlerguy, so what? She didn't do this and she still fucking lost.

So she and the rest of her squishy latte liberal cohort threw away a big chunk of LGBTQ support for what? What did Dems gain by embracing reactionary policy?

The problem with this is that it assumes Democrats have no agency. Democratic politicians have treated trans issues like those crusty old male Dems who don't like saying the word abortion.

Dems have never provided loud and full-throated support to trans issues. Go watch the recent John Oliver video on trans sports. There are very very good arguments on why excluding trans people from sports is incredibly anti-scientific and just thinly disguised bigotry. But Democratic politicians have never bothered developing the talking points to defend trans people, like they have for other core issues.

Look at how Kamala responded when asked about trans issues. She didn't provide full-throated support to trans people. Her reply was simply, "I'll follow the law."

Democrats have completely failed to defend trans people. They've quietly passed a few state level anti-discrimination laws, but in terms of rhetoric, they've completely ceded the space to conservatives. The only mainstream voices talking about trans issues have been the anti-trans bigots. The Democrats have instead just called the whole issue a distraction and hoped it would all just blow away.

They're right that it is a distraction, an artificial one concocted by Republicans. But that doesn't mean they can just ignore it.

Propaganda works. And if you don't do the hard rhetorical work to fight it, it eventually does change public opinion.

So, how large does a minority have to be before they are no longer disposable?

https://www.vox.com/policy/385549/trans-sports-transgender-biden-harris-democrats-titleix

What the Biden administration proposed on transgender athletes

In 2023, over strong objections of activists on the right and left, the Biden administration announced a proposed change to Title IX, the law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in any federally funded educational program. Their suggested change would prohibit outright bans on transgender athletes, but would permit schools to restrict transgender students from participating if they could demonstrate that inclusion would harm “educational objectives” like fair competition and the prevention of injury.

This more nuanced stance marked the first time the Biden administration took the position that sex differences can matter in school sports, something hotly disputed by leading LGBTQ rights organizations. The proposed rule also reflected research that suggests sex differences emerge over time, so the standard for inclusion in high school should not necessarily be the same as that in younger grades.

Contrary to the post-election grumblings from Biden allies in the Atlantic, the president has been virtually silent on his own administration’s proposal for the last 18 months. He’s never spoken about it, and it was never mentioned by any other Biden official, including in any White House briefing on transgender issues.

[⁝]

But there is some evidence that Republicans’ years of attacks have taken their toll on public opinion. Gallup found in 2023 that 69 percent of Americans believe transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that match their sex assigned at birth, an increase from the 62 percent who said the same in 2021.

Tellingly, Biden’s proposed policy on transgender athletes — allowing targeted restrictions for fairness and safety while rejecting blanket bans — would likely resonate more with average Americans than the hardline stances typically associated with Republicans, who leaned on transgender fearmongering in the midterms only to see their candidates flop, or Democrats, who many voters perceive as having no nuance on the topic at all. Yet the Biden administration’s reluctance to clearly communicate their middle-ground position left a vacuum that Republicans were happy to fill. It’s a dynamic that political observers say has become increasingly common: Democratic leaders stake out a position but, wary of internal rifts, default to strategic ambiguity even on issues where their stances might resonate with voters.

Interesting: nuance (do not restrict unless it would harm) was possible to beat Republicans on this policy. Internal rifts led them to stay silent on a stance (already being realized) that would resonate.

reminds me of 2003, when the bush regime convinced everyone that their marriage would somehow be worthless if they let the gays get married.

and it worked, the stupid fucks bought it. iraq paid badly for it tho, whoo hoo...