Fresh off punting a winnable election to a trans-eliminationist fascist political movement, a Democratic Party unprepared to accept it was a bad idea to pick aiding a genocide, promise to hunt down migrants better than the GOP, and court suburban white fascists who vote Republican over turning out their own base and beating Trump, has decided to blame their loss on trans Americans they already abandoned during that campaign anyway. Now, as the Trump regime legally codifies its attempts to eliminate trans people from public life, and even existence itself, "wise centrists" in the party are using their "one trans friend" as a shield to cover up their plan to, um, defend trans people from fascists even less!

https://truthout.org/articles/democrats-reshuffling-on-trans-issues-cedes-key-territory-to-the-far-right/

Democrats’ “Reshuffling” on Trans Issues Cedes Key Territory to the Far Right

"A Republican lawmakers wage an all-out assault on transgender people, Democrats are reportedly “reshuffling.” In a recent article, sources told NOTUS that the party is attempting to adjust its tone on trans issues following its crushing losses in the 2024 election, instead seeking a sort of middle ground that won’t “inflame” voters.

The myth that Democrats were too radical on trans issues has been echoed by various mainstream pundits in the wake of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. In reality, moderate Democrats largely declined to speak out about trans rights on the campaign trail. "

As a trans woman, I often wonder if rank and file, cis liberals understand the degree to which the (nominally) liberal establishment has completely abandoned, even turned against, trans people at the precise moment a politically empowered fascist movement with a trans-eliminationist agenda, has begun to legally enshrine an anti-trans pogrom.

Given the high-profile (although often performative) support the "liberal" establishment, including the Democratic Party, corporate entertainment and media organizations, and even large companies in the private sector expressed for trans rights a mere eight years ago, I can understand how folks who aren't living a trans existence, or plugged into trans issues, might not even be aware of how ephemeral that support was, and how much the mainstream establishment's appetite for defending trans people from fascist repression has shrunk. Speaking anecdotally, most labor class liberals I know who supported trans rights in 2016, still seem to support them (at least publicly) in 2025, and are opposed to the fascist anti-trans pogrom, but become angry, or defensive when I point out that the liberal leadership class no longer seems to agree with them.

Of course to excuse this act of scapegoating and betrayal, the liberal leadership class points to issue based polling that shows attacking trans rights is popular with cis-het people right now. Can anyone being honest really be surprised by that? Trump and the fascist GOP have spent the past six years manufacturing consent for an anti-trans pogrom, while our "allies" in the liberal mainstream discourse have increasingly refused to even talk about trans rights in a humanizing, effective way; and as such, I'm supposed to be shocked that trans rights aren't polling well in cis-het America? You know what else isn't polling well right now in America? A cowardly, collaborationist Democratic Party that refuses to stand up to Elon Musk, Downmarket Mussolini, and the fascist Trump regime; to turn around and blame the party's feckless incompetence on trans people existing so the GOP can make attack ads pretending that's Democrat's fault, would be craven and malicious at the best of times. To do it in the middle of a fascist anti-trans pogrom, when every trans person resides firmly in the crosshairs of Trump's eliminationist agenda, is unconscionable, and unforgivable.

Look, I don't know how to tell people that my right to exist as my authentic self is not a bargaining chip to be traded with nazis who want me dead, in response to an Astroturfed moral panic, and the results of one election in which there's little evidence the Democratic Party was even *trying* to win, without making them feel defensive. The simple truth however is that if whether or not you're prepared to even pretend to fight for the idea that trans rights are human rights, in the middle of a fascist anti-trans pogrom that is now taking on the force of law, depends on what focus group polling says then you never believed trans rights were human rights at all.