ATLANTA (AP) — After losing the White House and both chambers of Congress, Democrats are grappling with how to approach transgender politics and policy after the campaign included scathing and often misleading attacks on the issue from Republicans .
Doubts abound after President-elect Donald Trump based his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris on sweeping promises on the economy and immigration. But Democrats also won’t soon forget the punch line in Trump’s anti-transgender ads that became ubiquitous on Election Day: “Kamala is for she/her; President Trump is for you.”
“Week after week after week of this ad coming in and sticking and us not responding, I think that was the beginning of the end,” former Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said of the 30-second spot that was part of 215 Millions of dollars in anti-transgender advertising were spent by Trump and Republicans, according to tracking company AdImpact.
“They portrayed her as something that I believe she is not,” Rendell said. “They portrayed her as a far-left liberal.”
The fallout has left some progressive and moderate Democrats struggling between the party’s state-of-the-art identity as a champion of civil rights and its electoral success in much of America where these attacks resonated.
“There are just a number of issues where we are out of touch,” Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate Democrat from Massachusetts, said in an interview, just days after he sparked recriminations within his party for saying he doesn’t want his daughters to play sports against biological men. Critics said Moulton adopted Trump’s arguments that liberals would “allow men to compete in women’s sports.”
“I think Republicans are taking a hateful stance on trans issues,” Moulton told The Associated Press, but stressed that Democrats are still losing voters because of the party’s “stance.”
“Instead of talking down and telling you what to believe,” he argued, Democrats should “listen to hard-working Americans.”
LGBTQ+ advocates, meanwhile, argue that the 2024 election was more about economic issues than Trump’s transgender rhetoric. They are calling on political leaders to counter misinformation that they say threatens the health and safety of transgender Americans, who make up less than 1% of the U.S. population.
“Trans people have existed and lived side by side for years, received medical care and participated in social life for years, said Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of GLAAD, a leading LGBTQ+ advocacy group. “Nothing new happened,” Ellis said, other than Republicans highlighting her in a presidential campaign year.
“It didn’t change a single vote,” Ellis argued. “But it has made the world a lot more dangerous for trans people.”
Another Democratic representative from Massachusetts, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, did not mention Moulton by name but said some reactions to the election had “scapegoated and dehumanized” transgender people. “This congresswoman sees you and loves you,” Pressley wrote on the social media platform X.
Certainly, it is hard, if not impossible, to identify individual issues that can influence a national election, and there are mixed results about what voters think about transgender rights.
Overall, 54% of voters said support for transgender rights in government and society went too far, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 people who voted this fall. About 2 in 10 said the support didn’t go far enough and another 2 in 10 said it was about right. But 85% of Trump voters thought transgender support had gone too far.
Still, just over half of all voters, 52%, oppose a ban on gender-specific medical treatments such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers, while 47% support such proposals.
About a quarter of Harris voters said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. About 4 in 10 said it was about right, and about 4 in 10 said it didn’t go far enough.
Trump and the Republicans tried tirelessly to capitalize on the issue. They heaped praise on transgender athletes, with Trump incorrectly labeling two Olympic boxers as transgender women. They used Harris’ comments as a presidential candidate in 2019 — before she became vice president — to effectively blame her for laws that provide transgender health care to federal prisoners and detainees.
And Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that “your child goes to school and a few days later comes home with surgery” to change his or her gender.
In reality, the Biden administration has ruled that Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity — but the Education Department’s rules do not specifically address transgender athletes. The federal law Trump references in his ads requires people in U.S. government custody to have access to gender-affirming medical treatments. These policies were in effect throughout Trump’s term in office from 2017 to 2021; They are not something Biden’s administration specifically introduced.
And it is not legal in any state for a school to designate and provide surgical treatment for minor students.
“You have to fight back with these statements,” Moulton said, adding that the silence increases the negative impact on transgender people. “What have we shown about our willingness to advocate for trans people by simply remaining silent and ignoring the problem and the attack?”
Still, Moulton said Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill and in statehouses should give individual elected officials and voters the space to take more conservative positions, and he defended his own comments that he doesn’t want his daughters to compete against men in athletics compete.
“I don’t want them to be run over on the field by a male or former male athlete, but as a Democrat I should be afraid to say that,” Moulton told the New York Times last week.
Before leaving office as Texas Democratic leader, Gilberto Hinojosa said that support for transgender rights does not necessarily include public funding for gender reassignment surgery.
“We can say, ‘Okay, we respect people’s right to say we don’t want my tax dollars used for this,'” Hinojosa told Texas Public Radio. Hinojosa later apologized on social media, saying LGBTQ Americans “deserve to feel seen, valued and safe in our state and our party.”
Ellis, the GLAAD CEO, pointed to Delaware voters choosing to appoint state Sen. Sarah McBride as the first transgender member of Congress as evidence that Americans “don’t hate trans people.”
For her part, McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, noted that she did not run with her identity — although it was no secret — and instead spoke to voters about “affordable health care, housing and child care” for all.
“The party that focused on culture wars, the party that focused on trans people, was the Republican Party,” McBride told reporters on Capitol Hill after her victory. “It was Donald Trump,” she added, who “tried to divide and distract from the fact that he has absolutely no policy solutions to the problems that are actually keeping voters awake.”
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Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.
