By Ben Johnson
The Washington Stand
Former President Bill Clinton tried to warn the Kamala Harris campaign that its extreme position on the transgender issue would lead to its defeat, but the campaign rebuffed him, according to a report in The New York Times. The story broke as a Democrat-commissioned poll found that swing state voters cited the vice president’s focus on transgenderism and other social issues as their top reason for voting against the Democratic ticket in 2024.
Shortly after the Democratic Party awarded its presidential nomination to Kamala Harris, the Trump campaign focused its advertisements on the transgender issue — and reaped electoral benefits. The Trump-Vance campaign focused on Harris’s support for taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prison inmates and illegal immigrants. One ad featured a 2019 video of candidate Harris boasting that, as California attorney general, she “changed the policy in the state of California so that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to” taxpayer-funded cross-sex hormones and transgender surgeries.
“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” the 30-second spot concluded.
Another Trump ad featured black radio talk show host “Charlamagne Tha God” (Lenard McKelvey) reacting to the ad. That commercial alone moved voters 2.7 percentage points, according to a Harris super PAC, Future Forward.
Seeing the internal polls slipping away from the Democrats spurred a former president to offer some advice. “At one point, former President Bill Clinton told an associate, ‘We have to answer it and say we won’t do it’” — that is, say the Democratic Party will not support the extreme transgender agenda — The New York Times reported. “He even raised the issue in a conversation with the campaign and was told the Trump ads were not necessarily having an impact, according to two people familiar with his conversations. He never broached the topic publicly.
Backing away from the issue would prove difficult, as the 2024 Democratic Party platformendorses the transgender agenda in its entirety. “Democrats will vigorously oppose state and federal” laws protecting minorsfrom life-altering and irreversible surgeries, or denying prisonerstaxpayer-funder gender mutilation surgeries, said the platform.
But the Harris-Walz campaign apparently took Clinton’s concern seriously enough to produce ads spinning the issue, but they went nowhere. “Ads the Harris team produced with a direct response to the ‘they/them’ ads wound up faring poorly in internal tests. The ads never ran,” reported the paper.
The newspaper did not clarify whether the ads were poorly produced or if the Democratic Party’s base rejected their message of moderation.
Harris also failed to delineate a position on the issue in the rare interviews in which the issue arose. “Are you still in support of using taxpayer dollars to help prison inmates or detained illegal aliens to transition to another gender?” asked Fox News anchor Bret Baier.
“I will follow the law,” she replied.
No Issue Moved Voters Away from Harris More Than Trans Extremism
The transgender issue capsized the Harris campaign, a new Democratic poll has found.
Among swing voters, this issue moved swing votes away from Harris more than any other. Swing voters said they did not vote for the Democratic ticket in 2024, because “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.” That statement ranked one point ahead of voter dissatisfaction with inflation and two points higher than illegal immigration, according to Blueprint, a new public opinion research initiative funded by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and designed to “provide insights and recommendations on how to reach the voters who will be essential to delivering the Democrats the White House and control of Congress.”
“[L]iberal women were much less comfortable than they were with any other issue,” The New York Times stated. “[M]oms get really visibly angry” at this issue, notedRepublican pollster Jim McLaughlin, “It’s a fairness issue. They don’t want their daughters to lose a scholarship, and they don’t want them to get hurt.”
It wasn’t just suburban women who recoiled at the priorities of a vice president who once encouraged everyone to “stay Woke” forever. “There’s a couple of groups in the United States, young men and Latino voters, that just did not respond in a positive way to our candidate and our message and our record,” admitted Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.).
Republicans found their issue and ran with it. Republicans spent $65 million on ads highlighting Democrats’ transgender extremism between August and the beginning of October.
After President Donald Trump’s 31-state victory, which included winning the popular vote, some Democrats have begun to call for Clintonesque “triangulation”: an appearance of moderation for the sake of gaining power.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who unsuccessfully sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, pointed out, “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
“The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far-Left,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), who filledthe empty seat left by the expulsion of former Rep. George Santos, after the election. “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.”
“Democrats aren’t saying that, and they should be,” insistedSuozzi.
“Democrats should be smarter on the women’s athletics thing: 85% of Americans oppose men transitioning after puberty and competing against women,” said Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” the morning after the election.
“Nobody wants to hurt transgenders,” agreed panelist Mike Barnicle. “But how many of them are there?”
The real problem is the Democratic Party has forgotten how to talk to “normal people” and are “not the party of common sense,” Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky told CNN on Thursday. “When we put pronouns after names and say she/her,” most people dismiss it as “virtual-signaling.”
Democrats Should Wwn Their Extremism, Say Conservatives
Some dismissed this as a campaign tactic inspired by fear and loss. “They lost so bad they’re starting to have common sense again,” observed Riley Gaines, who had to compete against a male swimmer who identifies as a female named Lia Thomas.
Despite polls showing the harm the issue has inflicted, the party’s left-wing base resists any suggestion that they should tone down or “de-center” their message in any way. The chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), believed she is on the right side of history, citing the radical transformation of social views on same-sex marriage. She also noted she is “the proud mom of a daughter who happens to be trans” — that is, a male who identifies as female.
In the days before the election, Kelley Robinson, the president of an LGBTQ+ pressure group known as the Human Rights Campaign, predicted GOP ads “would fall flat again in 2024,” reported The New York Times.
Others pointed the finger at racism and sexism. “Misogyny is very, very real in this country,” claimed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “The narrative cannot be, ‘Kamala Harris somehow failed,’” insistedMini Timmaraju, CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America), a key Harris ally.
But the fault lies with Democratic radicalism, conservatives said.
“Democrats transed children in school and insisted on taxpayer-funded sex change procedures,” said Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project. “It’s the culture, stupid.”
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
