As if trans people didn’t’ have enough to worry about, Democrat supporters have already started to throw us under the bus. In January 2025, Trump and his cronies will retake the White House and we’ll be the target of anti-trans legislation and executive orders. LGBTQ+ people overwhelmingly voted for Harris, with over 86% casting a ballot for the Democrats according to exit polls. But the narrative is already leaning towards the idea that it is trans people’s fault that Trump won.
In the aftermath of any election, there’s a massive post-mortem on why one side won and the other lost. Exit poll data shows that Trump received a huge amount of support from young men, and over 50% of white women voted for the Republican candidate. Primary reasons given for the votes were usually based around the economy, inflation, immigration, and crime. But some pundits and politicians have decided that the real reason Harris lost was because she campaigned on trans rights, even though it was not remotely a central focus of her campaign.
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A panel on Morning Joe spent their airtime explaining that Trump’s win came down to trans issues. One panelist used the tone-deaf statement “No one wants to harm transgenders, but how many of them are there? Seriously?” (at least 1.6 million in the United States, by the way) and claimed that people were frustrated by pronoun usage and that was why voters were so susceptible to anti-trans ads. Bari Weiss, a lesbian who has historically made anti-trans statements, went on Fox News to claim that the Democrats lost because they ran on “niche issues like gender fluidity.” And the chair of the Democratic party in Texas has had to apologize after claiming that we “go to far” on trans rights and it is something the “big bulk of our population does not support.”
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Taken as single statements and confidently pushed explanations for the loss, that might almost sound like it makes sense. But none of those claims actually line up with the facts. Harris and many other candidates barely mentioned trans issues at all during their campaign: the Democrats were largely silent on the matter. It was Republican attacks that claimed Democrats were obsessed with trans rights. Additionally, there were a wealth of historic wins from trans candidates across the United States, including the election of Sarah McBride as the first trans member of Congress. And perhaps most importantly, most polls showed that the majority of voters were not swayed the anti-trans attack ads, preferring trans people to be left alone to do our thing and for politicians to focus on issues that affected them more directly, like inflation.
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The problem here was never Democratic support for trans people. The problem has been Republican lies about trans people and about what the Democrats want to do. Millions of dollars went into promoting lies about a complex issue that can’t and shouldn’t be litigated in a 30 second political ad. The answer isn’t for the Democrats to reevaluate their support of a marginalized group to see if they can win more votes next time. Sadly, it seems like that is the solution that some politicians are already leaning into.
Two House Democrats have picked up transphobic dog whistles around trans sports. Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts claimed “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. 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.” Similarly, Representative Tom Suozzi of New York said “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.” For Suozzi, he argues that “The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left.” Both campaigned with LGBTQ+ backing and have opposed anti-trans bills in the past, but might now be turning tail because they see Trump’s win as a referendum on trans rights.
Certainly, over half the electorate have demonstrated that someone vowing to take away trans rights and freedoms isn’t enough to stop them voting for him. However, for most, those promises don’t seem to have been the driving force behind their vote. Throwing trans people under the bus after this election and blaming the loss on us is an easy thing to do, but it’s not supported by the evidence. It is really just a short-sighted way to avoid looking at the real issues that led to Harris’ loss by using the trans community as a scapegoat.♦
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