Trans journalist Erin Reed has published a list of Democratic midterm candidates with anti-trans records, and the question she is forcing is one the party would rather not answer: if trans voters keep rewarding Democrats who harm them, what signal does that send? The calculation is real, the stakes are high, and there is no clean answer.
You can replace any number of subjects for trans and the argument always holds. It’s a shitty situation but it’s an unavoidable consequence of first-past-the-post voting.