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I keep seeing progessives like Krystal Ball, Kyle Kulisnki and Jon Stewart parroting the new party line that "Kamala never ran on trans issues, so it's unfair to say she lost the election because of trans issues." They keep repeating the same "debunk" that Kamala never uttered the word trans in the last 3 months of her campaign or whatever.
However nearly everyone lived through the last 4 years of the Democrats expending massive amount of political capital pushing trans issues. The Biden admin "reinterpreting" Title IX to mandate how all publicly funded schools handle trans kid, which means penises in girls locker rooms, biological men in girls sports, and violating parental rights with secret transitions in schools. The Biden admin leaned on WPATH, already an organization with few guardrails due to their ideological biases, and had them remove all age guidelines on child transition. They appointed a trans pediatrician who's top priority as Assistant Secretary for Health seemed to be transitioning children, and even gave her a phony rank in the armed forces to have some fake historic "first".
And Kamala Harris said she would do nothing different than the Biden administration.
James Carville came out recently, to much derision from progressives, for claiming in his folksy way that if you govern a certain way, even if you don't run on it, the other sides gets to beat you upside the head with your record. And the Biden/Harris regime had a record of one of the worst crimes against humanity in history in promoting the sterilization and mutilation of children.
If the election had gone the other way, and abortion was cited as being as important a reason for the Republicans' drubbing as trans issues were for the Democrats', would anyone at all have thought that Trump "not campaigning on abortion" meant that Republicans were excused from changing course?
I think, in that case, not changing would be considered to be certain doom for the Republicans' prospects. Of course, that's probably overestimating that effect much like those quoted are underestimating the effects of their own not changing course.
Funny you mention that, before Election Day I did in fact see multiple ads promising that Donald Trump would not pass a national abortion ban. Clearly, his campaign recognized it as a vote-losing issue and took steps to try to remedy that.
Cursory research in how politics work in the country to their immediate north would have told them this is a flag the party with an urban female voting bloc will wave without end.
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Is anyone supposed to be convinced by that? What's next, "The New England Patriots didn't play on the far half of the football field, so it's unfair to say they lost the game because of that."?
The pundits are claiming that she abandoned a powerful and convincing topic because...why, exactly? The fact is that Trump did run on Kamala's stance on trans issues, and got some easy wins from that.
Yes, 100% this. I've largely stopped paying attention to election campaigns because the major parties have extensive track records on exactly the things I'm concerned about instead of a proxy measure like how well they can focus-group and make promises. I still check up on independent candidates and the individual representatives, but it hasn't shifted my vote yet.
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Also, everyone instructed by their school or firm that they must at least pay lip service to the woke line on the trans issue.
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Trans is a great attack surface against Democrats. They are constitutionally incapable of backtracking due to the culture and composition of their coalition. They can ignore the issue — many of them would like to ignore the issue — but they cannot answer the question, “why was my daughter posted-up by a 6’2” man during her high school basketball game?”
The Dems probably thought the Republicans were incapable of backtracking on abortion, but Trump pulled it off.
Trump is Nixon in the "only Nixon can go to China" sense, on many many issues -- the Democrats habit of casting their Nixons into the outer darkness works against them here.
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Only Trump could do that, though. The democrats don't have a similar figure. Who is their great MAGA king?
Democrats have a bad habit of marginalizing all their most promising candidates early on so they can’t compete with party flacks. Hell, even Barack Obama only broke out by accident, that wasn’t how that election cycle was “supposed” to go.
Reminds me of the Bolsheviks being so scared of “Napoleonisation” (i.e. that a strong and charismatic party leader would upstage everyone else) that they hamstrung their most popular and effective guy, Trotsky, and were much the worse for it.
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The Public Health Services Commissioned Corps has been around since the 18th century. Say what you will about the other stuff, about which I mostly don't disagree, but the head of the PHS being an Admiral wasn't invented for Rachel Levine.
The Assistant Secretary for Health (who is head of the Public Health Service, and therefore the direct boss of the Surgeon General who is head of the uniformed Corps) only wears a PHSCC uniform and uses a PHSCC paramilitary rank if they are a PHSCC member - and they don't have to join if they are not already one.
Looking at the list on Wikipedia, there have been 17 senate-confirmed ASHs since the office was established in 1963, of whom 7 had PHSCC ranks. Richmond and Satcher served as Surgeon General and ASH simultaneously, and Mason served as Acting Surgeon General while ASH, so they all had excuses. I am happy to accuse the other four (including Levine) of LARPing as a uniformed public health officer. Interestingly, the four LARPers are four of the five most recent ASHs - something changed under Obama, and didn't change back under Trump.
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