This Week in Trans News: No, Trans People Didn’t Lose Your Election
Noted centrist election-loser Claire McCaskill blames anemic Democratic performance on “transsexual” rights
In what is quickly becoming a quadrennial tradition, pundits, and centrist politicians have hopped on the “blame the tr*nnies” bandwagon to explain why Democrats lost several eminently winnable races this year.
Former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill blamed this year’s weak Democratic sown ballot election performance on “cultural issues” like abortion, gay rights, and her party’s support for “transsexual” rights in an appearance on MSNBC Wednesday night.
Four years ago, it was the likes of the New York Times’ Frank Bruni, The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer, and even Saturday Night Live repeating the refrain.
Despite the commonality of this claim, there again, like four years ago, is simply no evidence to back it up. Trans issues were largely ignored this election cycle, by everyone.
Joe Biden ran as explicitly the most pro-trans presidential candidate in history, and he’s poised to win the White House. Nevada overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure to enshrine the right to marriage equality in the state constitution. The queers are not responsible for your election loss.
So what the hell happened to Democrats?
Despite millions in high-paid election consultants and slickly produced ads, Democrats largely underperformed expectations this cycle.
They obsessively ran on healthcare this cycle, as they did two years. But this time, there wasn’t widely covered attempts by congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care A. There is a Republican-led lawsuit attempting to rule the law unconstitutional currently before the Supreme Court, but it seemingly didn’t break through to voters more worried about the pandemic and resulting economic collapse.
But even while running on health care, Democrats presented a weak case. People, largely, hate private health insurance. I don’t know a single person, in any party, who doesn’t think the current health care system isn’t a scam.
There weren’t any real solutions on offer from Democrats, running against Republicans who promised to lower taxes.
Besides the failing health care appeal, Democrats suffered from trying to convert Republican voters to Dem voters, a fruitless endeavor that should never again be repeated.
The Lincoln Project, a group of Never-Trump Republicans who raised millions from Democratic donors and produced ads that made centrist dipshits laugh on Twitter, is likely the biggest failure in political history, at least from a Democratic perspective.
If early exit polls are to be believed, a higher percentage of Republicans supported Donald Trump this year than in 2016. Good job Lincoln Project and Dems who bought their argument. You really got ‘em.
The project’s aim was to present Trump as uniquely bad, compared with the other, “better” Republicans. It was a line even the Biden campaign borrowed. Instead of tying down ballot Republicans to the sinking stone of Trump, they let the majority party entirely off the hook, and congressional Republicans reaped the benefit.
The hard truth though, the truth that thousands of Democratic consultants don’t want to hear, is that they failed. None of their fancy voter software, or tedious polling helped them win. As a political class, establishment Democrats simply cannot make an argument, and everyone knows it.
They’ll come out with some poll or other supporting their position, but they’ll fret in the face of moral questions like “are oil profits worth murdering the planet?” Or “should people go bankrupt if they get sick?” People see that and they see their air of moral superiority for what it is, a sham.
Take a stand, make an argument. For the love of God, look at yourselves and not the trans people.
