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.
MLK would support getting less bad segregationists elected because they were easier to work with, do we still have segregation? If trans people in sports is the only contention and they agree on everything else, then that’s progress. We can fight on the trans people in sports point next primary. Let’s also not forget that Donald Trump is trying to end Democracy entirely and will oppress more than just trans people.
I don’t know, seems transgender people are gonna be fucked no matter which party wins
believe it or not, also guillotine.
One of the best responses I’ve heard was from the Professional Left:
(Starting around the 26:30 mark)
Boils down to: Democrats can be educated, Republicans will destroy you. Quite possibly in the literal sense.
What’s a pro trans voter anyway? Anti biggotry would be more accurate
Thats more broad encompassing, whilst anti trans agenda is dangerously high right now, so specific reference is important here.
I’m against bigotry in general. However, since transgender people seem to be getting tread on a lot right now, I also make a point of saying I’m pro-transgender. It’s a more specific form of anti-bigotry. Also, there are people who claim to be anti-bigotry and still have transphobic views.
I just don’t get the obsession with transgender people. What did they ever do other than just wanting to be left alone? Did a bunch of them bomb a bunch orphanages with burning puppies running out of the flaming building?
They’re an easy target because they’re a small minority and it’s easy to convince people who aren’t educated in the subject that they’re doing harm by letting men into women’s spaces and making children change gender
Divide and conquer
They’re a pawn that bigots like to use to rile their base and distract from other issues. With enough enthusiasm, a concerted effort can make about anything the enemy to rally against. It’s mostly fear mongering, but also has a serious detrimental effect to those being targeted.
Lyndon B. Johnson: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Nonwhite, trans, gay, feminist, non-Christian, furry, etc – substitute at will for the latest boogeyman.
Exactly. They’ll take any group and demonize the “other” just to have someone they can point fingers at. It’s all distraction. Sadly, trans people are the “other” of the moment. Historically, this shit doesn’t end well, and when they’re done with trans people they’ll “other” another group.
There is a large contingent of voters that are deeply religious and hate them. They are trying to appeal to those voters. America is still one of the most religious countries in the world.
There is a large contingent of voters that are deeply religious and hate them.
This is what I am asking about. Why? What is the bug up religious people’s asses about transgender people.
Their argument usually is that God doesn’t make mistakes and trying to change the gender you’re born with is just flaunting him or something. It’s not a rational argument, their book or their pastor says it’s unnatural and they follow like the little sheep their are.
Hey those puppies were Hamas /s
I like how its always a minorities job to vote against their own self interest “for the greater good” and not the job of a Democratic politician to not throw them under the bus. Especially with how seemingly extremely important this one demographic is if a significant portion of said demographic not voting will cause the candidate to lose.
Not for the greater good - for their own good. Even if you only care about one issue (and justifiably so), and both candidates are on the wrong side of that issue, it is likely that one of them is far worse on that issue than the other. It doesn’t have to feel good to vote for the someone who stands in opposition to your interests, but it is better than letting the person who stands in opposition to your existence win.
My issue isn’t whether voting for a democratic candidate or not is better overall as a trans person, I think basically every trans person in the US knows that policy wise a democrat will, at worst, be the same as the republican they’re running against on trans rights specifically, and at least a bit better on some others. (There is a consistent belief on every one of these posts that somehow trans people don’t understand that as well, which is a different issue lol)
The point is that if a politician doesn’t lose support/votes for taking an anti-trans position, then there’s nothing punishing them for taking that position. That’s the argument being made about how voting for an anti-trans democrat is voting against your own good, not because of their policy specifically, but because by voting for them in spite of it you send a signal that their position on trans issues can be the same as a republicans as long as they’re marginally better than one in other ways.
For what its worth, I’m trans and am planning on voting for all Democrats in the midterms, even though I’m disappointed in a few of them. However, there are a couple candidates mentioned in this article specifically (namely cuellar + kaptur and a few others) where I think not voting for them has a very strong argument I’d consider if I lived in those states.
If someone said “I want to kill you humanely” and their opponent just said “I want to kill you”, I think the rest of us wouldn’t be chastising you for refusing to vote for either. This is an issue easy for cis people to counsel a cost-benefit analysis on, but it’s deeply personal for the victims.
If these politicians think throwing them under the bus will net them votes that’s on the politician to prove, not for their victims to support.
Doing nothing while bloodthirsty bigots march into power unopposed is still ‘voting against self interest’. The consequences are simply far more immediate and far harder to counter.
Ranked choice voting so we stop having to pick terrible Democrats. Gaining prevalence in local elections!
We had that in Washington State but both parties worked to abolish it, saying that we were somehow too stupid to understand it.
I hate them both sooooo much.
They do not want ranked choice voting because that would make them lose power
Democrats can only maintain their position as controlled opposition if they control the party and can override primaries. If the people actually get a choice, then they become the people’s party and stand in opposition to the billionaire class.
We would have class war and eventually develop a strong state, similar to China, where billionaires get life sentences for bribery and can be fined and jailed for trying to undermine the state. China is so strict that it treats corrupt billionaires and government officials like we treat terrorists. There’s no legal maneuvering. They freeze your legal rights to conduct the investigation and trial, so that you cannot continue your corruption. China is a true state where leaders run the government, not businesses, whereas the United States is an oligarchy devolving into a system where private business owners run the government (fascism).
Private business owners have always run the government. From the founding to today
So make them fucking stop. “We’ve always done it this way” is the worst possible excuse for maintaining status quo. Just because things have always been shit doesn’t mean they are cursed to always remain shit. They are, but only unless and until people do something about it.
Voting for them doesn’t make them stop.
Best evidence here to support how important it’s established nationally
Pro corpo Dems run WA state and likely will for a very long time. The latest evidence of corruption and ethics violations that are just swept under the rug and ignored are a really bad sign.
Seems to be getting worse as many Democrats from red states migrate here as they are just happy to vote for anyone with a DNC endorsement. They’ll completely ignore the other dem candidates who want change in this state.
Vote for the pro-trans Republican instead, obviously! /S
The time to oppose anti-trans Democrats is the primary. In the general election, it’s too late: at that point your choice is an anti-trans Democrat or an anti-trans and otherwise fascist Republican.
Many of these Democrats such as Talarico waited until after the primary to start their anti-trans rhetoric. We would have already voted them out if they didn’t deceive us.
The only question that’s valid to have about Talerico on this topic is “is Ken Paxton better, or is he even worse?” The answer is, “no, Ken Paxton is even worse.” If Talerico doesn’t win, Paxton WILL. End of.
For trans Texans, not voting for Talerico in order to keep Paxton out of office is objectively idiotic – it’s basically suicide by spite. That’s just reality, and reality doesn’t give a fuck if you like it or not.
And furthermore, politics is about building coalitions. No two candidates will ever agree on everything, and no candidate will ever represent every single one of your interests. You have to pick the best choice for you out of what you’ve got. If you think a Republican will represent your interests as a trans person more than a Democrat, then go for it.
I agree with you! To quote myself from another, now deleted thread:
You gotta get the pro-trans candidate in the primary. If you wait to look up if your candidates are anti-trans until right before the general then you waited too fucking long.
Waiting until after the primary to realize that both candidates are anti-trans is like waiting until your house is already on fire to consider if you should buy fire extinguishers. Voting for the shitty Democrat is painful but letting the even shittier Republican who also hates immigrants too win is like adding gas so that your neighbor’s house will burn too.
Talarico changed his position after the primary.
Talarico wasn’t properly vetted before the primary.
Voting shouldn’t be a sacrifice of that magnitude.
For a lot of single-issue voters, this kind of calculation is theoretical. For trans people right now, it is not. An anti-trans Democrat in office is a harm. A Republican who is openly, aggressively, legislatively hostile to trans existence is a different order of harm. Both things are true, and genuinely hard to reconcile.
Yeah, that’s an awful choice. I can’t think of a better option than the article presents — name the candidates and their shortcomings/wrongs.
If you’re going to sacrifice your own safety and security, at least let it be for revolutionary direct action, not laying down for the slaughter.
Vote for lesser evil + organize, get loud and make being trans normal in red states. The American system is so screwed up with no ability to dissolve your legislatures before the 4 year cycle. If you live in a state of those races, it would be better to be ignored than your rights taken away. If you need anything go seek the support of a Democrat that is pro-trans from out of your state, with control of Congress they would be able to help you more if your state’s legislators are useless but of the same caucus rather than of a caucus that is actively blocking efforts. Sorry if I sound flippant about it, but I would tell moderate voters the same about a progressive candidate.
If you’re worried about the ratchet affect, the solution I don’t think is to turn the screws further in the direction of the ratchet. The UK example is weird, the Labour Party’s somewhat to blame but I don’t fully lay it at their feet, because their justice system is biased in very old ways, negatively affecting people’s rights to gender expresssion.
The USA has already tried in 2016 the “haha, let Republicans vote for Donald Trump, they’ll see how bad it is when they vote for racism rather than a milquetoast candidate and they will disavow it forever after” method, that didn’t work, only made things a lot worse, he got elected again. Even if you have the long game in mind, not voting appears to send, even if a Republican wins 49% to 47%, a signal that the people mandate that trans people should be hurt, rather than a more neutral signal. States that had been trending red turning blue signals nationally a change in the direction of trans acceptance, regardless of the willingness of the candidate to associate during the campaign with pro-trans advocates or not.
Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils, is still voting for evil.
And more importantly, exactly how we got here.
I beg to differ, it is my opinion that not doing so is what got the USA Trump (if that’s what you mean by ‘us here’) twice.
Fifty years of voting for the lesser is what got us to Trump. It’s all anyone has been doing since before I’ve been alive.
You vote for evil, you get evil. It’s well past time to start demanding not-evil.
You do realize that Talarico is running for US Senate, right? Whether or not he gets elected has almost nothing to do with how Texas treats its trans residents. He has no say in TX politics as he is leaving the TX legislature in attempt to make it to the Senate.
And OP is saying that he will face consequences for choosing to change his position on the trans question after the primaries. Maybe he’ll lose, and that will tell the DNC and other candidates not to use trans people as a scapegoat (which is a fascist tactic). But whether he wins or loses has no bearing on how Texas treats trans people.
If you think a dem losing to a republican is going to send them a message about trans rights… you are totally wrong.
Republicans are going out of their way to hurt Trans people, do not let them win by voting 3rd party in close races!
We have the modern Republican party because people refused to support the not-insane and politicians changed their tune to avoid that. One of the arguments for el-Sayed in his primary victory was that Stevens would risk a replay of the Undecided issue. The idea that politicians (and other voters) just don’t look at demographic voting trends at all and pretend anyone who didn’t vote last election is a non-entity is silly.
send them a message
I’ve been hearing that kind of thing for decades - I remember single issuer voters voting Libertarian or Republican or whatever because the Democrats were “just as bad” on things like marijuana legalization, prison reform, etc.
There is effectively no message sent and nothing received when people sit out, throw their vote away on an absurd third party, or vote Republican.
Why are you running defence for them? Their job is to manage your expectations into extinction, they are your rulers not your friends.
So what you’re telling me is that my votes don’t matter and won’t send anyone a message and that Talarico showing he’s willing to lie in the primaries about his position on trans people and then change his position after we vote for him is the best chance I have simply because his party is blue? So we’ll get another Joe Manchin?
Uhhhh yes? Have you not paid any attention to how the two party system works?
I’m not saying it’s good, but I’m saying if you want to have a chance at making it better we need massive amounts of dems so the ones who are progressive can pass changes to make it better.
Voting for a more progressive person who has zero chance of winning is throwing your vote away. That’s how the system works. For years those voting green party for more liberal ideas have lost and split the vote so more republicans win who push platforms farther and farther right.
So yes, vote for the lesser of two evils until you have the opportunity to vote progressive and make your votes actually matter.
Primaries are the time to get the more progressive person for the election, don’t vote on the election day “to send a message”. That’s how we get Trump and MAGA
Yeah, so you’re not talking about reality. The Democrats have been sliding to the right themselves. That’s not the fault of the voters.
Yes it is. When they lose over and over to right wing opponents which way do you think they’ll slide? For those that refuse to vote unless they have a perfect candidate or one who does show up to vote who they then try to cater to?
You are the one missing reality when you think not voting or voting 3rd party for under 5% total vote matters at all. Because that’s what people have been doing and it clearly doesn’t work
You’re contradicting yourself. You’re saying people have been voting for third party but they never get even 3% of the vote, let alone 5%, so clearly that’s not the problem. And they’re not not voting because voter participation in 2020 was the highest since 1908 and 2024 was tied for second highest with 1960.
So again, you’re not dealing with reality. People aren’t choosing to not vote nor to vote third party. The Ds are continually sliding right because of something other than the voters.
I’ll be frank: I don’t think Paxton winning over Talarico will tell the DNC a single thing with respect to trans rights.
Whereas if Talarico wins, what is preventing him from changing his views in any way, at any point within the next 6 years? A Dem President in 2028, with the support of Congress including Talarico, can codify better protections for all humans, in all states despite any state like Texas’ objections. Paxton would be an active obstacle to that type of effort.
Yeah. We know how the Senate works. The problem is that the party is choosing strategies to win elections and those strategies include things like supporting genocide, scapegoating vulnerable people, condemning communism, expanding the military and the police, honoring ICE agents, destroying RCV campaigns, and punching left. For every win they get with these strategies, they will use the victories to claim that this is the way the party must go. For every loss using these strategies, they will attack the voters and say it’s the voters’ fault for not voting properly. They will then pay social media influencers to claim that the party never actually cared about people who didn’t vote for them, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent over the last several decades on “get out the vote campaigns”.
What expect is that if Paxton is willing to sacrifice his principles on the campaign trail, then he’s likely to sacrifice his principles once in the Senate and will vote with his Republican colleagues, because that’s the evidence he’s providing us. We don’t want another Manchin.
I mean no offense but you are sounding ignorant on these topics and assuming it’s a choice of nothing happening or things getting worse, when the reality is it is both sides making things worse in these few instances.
These Democrats are not simply ignoring us, they are taking away our rights. They are working with Republicans to pass laws to limit our freedoms, they are copying their talking points to demonize us, for all intents and purposes they are no different on trans issues as Republicans.
Likewise the UK justice previously had greater support for trans people but was changed under Labor to redefine what it meant so that it could exclude trans people. This was not some archaic law, but a political choice by Labor to actively harm trans people.
Guess what happens in an election with FPTP where a candidate from one of two parties will win, and people vote their conscience or don’t vote at all.
The worse of the two candidates wins.
If we’re talking about US senators or representatives, there’s a lot of value in having a majority in either or both houses, and the margins are pretty slim. Yes, you’ll risk getting another Fetterman, but the House majority party gets to pick the Speaker, which allows for a huge amount of control over what comes to the floor at all.
Ok, then that seems like a simple game theory case where the lesser worse should change to mollify those voters of conscience since the alternative is them always losing.
You’re still not going to get more rights by voting red or abstaining. You have allies. Let us help instead of forcing us to dig everyone out of a hole made by right wing funie Christians
No issue is a strict binary - there are many degrees of transphobia, just as there are many degrees of any bigotry, as well as many degrees of non-human-rights issues, like support for public schools or privatization of health care. I would imagine that in almost every case where there is an anti-trans democrat running against an anti-trans republican, there is a significant difference both in terms of how rabidly transphobic the candidate is and which specific anti-trans policies they will support. There is also likely to be a big difference whether or not there is any potential for them to see the error of their ways. While most anti-trans democrats are likely on the wrong side of trans participation in sports, they are not likely to support criminalizing trans existence or encouraging violence against trans people, while many republicans are. They also will face pressure from pro-trans members of their own party, and from significant pro-trans constituencies, which republicans will not.
In FPTP voting systems, we rarely have the luxury of voting for candidates who have our full-throated support in the general election. Even if one issue is massively more important to you than the rest (and when that issue is a matter of survival, that is 100% valid), there is almost always a greater and lesser evil on that issue alone. Voting shouldn’t be viewed as a matter of identity or even as an endorsement, but rather as a practicality. It is a method of weighing in as to which of the limited options available is more tolerable (or less intolerable). Does that suck? Absolutely. Does it make sense to vote any other way within such a system? Not at all - because if the more tolerable side loses, the only lesson they are likely to take from that loss is to become more like the winning, intolerable side.
Can I have a source on the claim that the Equality Act was changed to redefine what it meant so that it could exclude trans people?
context
Not arguing that it was changed, but in the court decision, the judges relied on the 1976 Sex Discrimintation Act for and even the ruling judge said himself, that trans people “had been led to believe… for the last 15 years that they had rights, which they didn’t have”. It was a judicial interpretation of the law that evaluated the 2004 gender equivalency provisions against the 1976 law moreso than the 2010 law to narrow the protected class from the 2010 law.
If a Musky PAC were to run ads saying how terrible Brown or another candidate would be for trans rights, in the same way Jewish and Arab voters were shown contradictory messages in 2024, would that influence how or whether you vote?
they are copying their talking points to demonize us
To be clear, I think that trans people should compete in sports according to their gender and be conferred the same rights as anyone else. But people that want to limit trans people’s participation in sports for flawed, scientifically refuted reasons while treating them as humans, I don’t think is the same, as wanting to ban them from bathrooms changing driver’s licenses and treating them as subhuman demon freaks. We should not equate the two.
To give a similar example, the fight for gay sex and marriage in Canada was fought over decades, and the stigma remains in small pockets. A progressive Prime Minister decriminalized it in the 1969 while not his entire Liberal Party was openly for it, and it was still in the decades after that a ban on workplace discrimination and in the 2000s when marriage was recognized. So we have to pull in the same direction, allow trans people the same basic rights as anyone else, then talk about competitive and recreational activites like sports later rather than just labelling it all as anti-trans sub-humanization talking points.
They MUST vote For them! Blue no MATTER who!
-People who voted for INDEPENDENT CUOMO Instead of Democrat Mamdani!
Might vote against their interests vs will pursue legislation that will legitimately harm them. Seems like an obvious lesser of two evils situation. Fixing the 2 party system is not the war of today. The war of today is preventing the takeover of fascism.
Democrats like Marcy Kaptur already have pursued legislation that legitimately harms us. Others like Talarico have signalled they will.
So what do you think the best course of action is?
The primaries have already happened. Nothing is going to change the candidates on the ballots unless someone drops out. As we’ve seen, this isn’t an issue that generates a big enough response for that.
anti-trans rhetoric is doing the work of fascism.
Blue MAGA ☝️
This is how we got here.
…and no alternative given, so that’s awesome.
I support all trans rights, but at this point there is SO much fucked up shit that needs fixed and repealed first, it’s def not high on my priorities as a major concern for our future.
What they get away with doing to trans folk they will next do to you.
Currently in the US trans people in federal prisons are forcibly detransitioned, trans minors can’t access necessary healthcare, including the compromise option of puberty blockers, and “trans ideology” was included as one of the “biggest threats to america” in a terms of what the current administration is focusing on in the name of anti-terrorism. Saying that trying to improve that situation is “not high on your priorities” or “a major concern” just because trans people are a small part of the population (especially when discussing an article about the democratic party continuing to shift towards anti-trans language and policy) is, at best, extremely insensitive.
Let’s get the pedophile running our country into prison then we can address that stuff.
I don’t get the fixation on the topic from anyone. The trans community is so small and yet it gets a huge amount of political focus. Sure, Republicans are actively attempting to remove the rights of trans people but that statement applies equally to anyone who isn’t them. Why let them control the conversation by focusing on that one group so much? It makes the average person think that the things Republicans are doing only impact groups they aren’t part of and that is absolutely not the case.
For trans people, I absolutely understand the fixation, because it is their lives at stake. But even if judging on just the one issue, and with no actual good choice on it, there are still degrees of badness, and one candidate is likely much more of a threat than the other in a given race.
It’s the same fixation people had with Gaza and gas prices and whether a candidate supports Brittney Spears. There are far too many single issue voters now and they are fucking up politics to the point that we have launched ourselves towards an Idiocracy at hyper speed.
Why? Because BOTH sides have been defunding education. And don’t give me shit about how one side does it more than the other. I don’t care.
When your single issue is human rights and genocide, they are not to blame. It’s the parties who choose to pursue these policies.
The way I think about it, the trans suppression in the US is like an upstairs sink, clogged with the faucet on full.
Everything else is like a dryer fire in the basement. For sure, the sink is something that needs to be addressed. But right now, the fucking basement is on fire.
Exactaly how I feel. They are being wronged by our government and we need to make things right, but there is so many more issues directly effecting every single person in this country that we need to be focusing on first. Sadly a lot people in the middle are uncomfortable with trans people and leaning too far into those issues right now just gives the pedo party more talking points to swing the middle away from sanity and into their wacky right wing shit.
Is this gonna be the 2026 version of Gaza?
A deeply unpopular and morally bankrupt position that costs key votes for a Democratic candidate, and then leads to neoliberals blaming a minority group’s lack of support for the candidate losing rather than the candidate choosing not to appeal to a seemingly very important chunk of their voting base? Maybe.
