A big part of the 2024 election post-mortem has been the debate around the television ad the Trump campaign claims as its most effective: the one that ends, “Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you.” The ad explicitly targets the vice president’s past support for taxpayer-funded gender confirmation surgeries for prisoners in California.
The political word seems to be landing on the conclusion that the ad means the Democratic Party has to back away from its support of trans rights, something that the Democrats have been unique in endorsing among left-of-center political parties in the Western World. However, while the ad is anti-trans, trans issues weren’t the primary reason the ad was effective.
In this week’s episode, I explain that the ad was about more than trans people and also how Democrats can rebuild from this election loss. For one thing, I lay out how they have to repair their “cool” factor with the public, something I dove into a year ago in this article.
Take a look.
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