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There has been a trend recently of leftists here promoting the idea that their social views are anodyne to "normies", but those of conservatives are repelant. To me this is consensus building. That their views are normal, unremarkable, just water in which we all swim, but those of opposition should remain unvoiced, lest they expose just how unpopular they are.
I don’t think @Rov_Scam is saying that normies are cool with leftist values. I read it as normies mostly don’t want to get dragged into the mud on culture war topics. Trump calling Kamala a DEI hire is an insult in language that only really matters to people firmly in his camp already, which is true. The Grill party voters that decide the election see it as Kamala saying nothing and Trump making a vaguely racist attack in response, raising the Grillist’s “Oh, right. This guy again.” alarms.
I disagree on the trans attack in terms of political value. Trans issues are still very much an ick for Grillists, so tying Harris/Walz to the trans enthusiasts on the left, especially in the context of enforcing it in schools, i think works to Trump’s benefit. “Vote for these two and you get four more years of gender ideology in your daily life” is exactly the kind of thing Grillists are hoping to avoid.
Normies just don't think about trans stuff, and they don't want to think about trans stuff. Intentionally bringing up trans stuff is annoying, which is why it's bad for Trump. Normies would also be annoyed by someone making a big fuss to get tampons put in boys' bathroom, but so long as they don't have to encounter it, they are happy.
Analogously, suppose it were the case that right wingers were really into anime tentacle porn. This would disgust normies, and they wouldn't like it. However, if the Harris campaign continuously brought it up, those feelings of disgust would bounce back to the Harris campaign.
The median American view on transgender issues is, "I don't get it, they have the right to do what they want, and I might have some worries about what's going on in the schools, but that's something I'll deal with a school board race, and I don't get why Presidential candidates think it's more important than the economy/immigration/abortion/whatever."
Again, America is an inherently libertarian and 'mind your own business' country, which will frustrate both left-leaning and right-leaning people occasionally.
The median private American view on trans issues is deeply philosophically inconsistent, combining both a level of acceptance that would make Ron Desantis cry with a level of bigotry that would be totally unacceptable to HR guidelines.
In all honesty, 90% of it comes down to what you picture a hypothetical trans girl looking like.
Donald Trump is arguably closest to the median view on trans issues, with the combination of ‘sure, Caitlyn Jenner can use the women’s bathroom at Trump tower’ but also ‘let’s not allow 11 year olds to ruin their lives with dangerous hormonal medication’.
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I've commented before that it's fascinating to watch this happening after decades - certainly enough decades to cover my entire lifetime so far - of the left explicitly saying that non-normie, non-anodyne social views that go against the status quo and make normies freak out should be not just tolerated and accepted, but celebrated merely due to the fact that they are oppressed by the majority. Which points to a couple of possibilities. One is that such statements were always just cynical, dishonest ploys to gain power by fooling the gullible or desperate. Another is that this is a case of "Jesus would agree with all of my social views, so you, as a follower of Jesus, should agree with all of my social views. Oh me, I'm not backwards enough to follow Jesus, I'm just hoping that by invoking Jesus, I can manipulate you into agreeing with me." That is, since the left lionizes the "weird" - often explicitly, using the exact same word - it doesn't carry much negative affect to them, but the right does denigrate "weirdness," so it affects them. Based on my perception "in the wild" of how the "weird" insult and, more generally, the claim that the leftist social views are just the normie default now, have landed, they seem about as effective as the typical case of an atheist trying to use the Bible to convince a Christian to agree with his social views. I'd guess there's definitely aspects of both going on there, which is pretty expected with any such wide scale phenomenon around such a large ideological/political bloc.
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