Trans journalist Erin Reed has published a list of Democratic midterm candidates with anti-trans records, and the question she is forcing is one the party would rather not answer: if trans voters keep rewarding Democrats who harm them, what signal does that send? The calculation is real, the stakes are high, and there is no clean answer.
I like how its always a minorities job to vote against their own self interest “for the greater good” and not the job of a Democratic politician to not throw them under the bus. Especially with how seemingly extremely important this one demographic is if a significant portion of said demographic not voting will cause the candidate to lose.
Doing nothing while bloodthirsty bigots march into power unopposed is still ‘voting against self interest’. The consequences are simply far more immediate and far harder to counter.
Exactly. I’m frankly sick and fucking tired of cis people telling trans people how they know our needs so much better than we do. The hubris is astounding.
Yeah the constant through line on every one of these kinds of posts from people that minorities of any type are too stupid to understand that Republicans are bad for them or something is kinda gross. Like basically every left-leaning minority person discussing Democrat politicians falling short gets that republican policies are typically worse, the issue is not having a good alternative that’s not still bad, and choosing not to vote for them is based on that, not some notion that they’ll be better off under a republican. The whole point of voting is supposed to be that your vote gives you leverage to influence politicians to take your stance (or more accurately to convince you of that to keep people from doing actions that actually meaningfully affect change).
Saying “vote blue no matter who” or whatever equivalent of you should vote for a democrat no matter what just allows democrats to ignore that supposed leverage and hold voters hostage by using MAGA as a point of leverage to try and force people to vote for them. There’s a reason that Trump never got arrested under Biden, or barred from office, and Democrats kept preaching unity rather than consequences. They directly benefit from MAGA existing.
Trump isn’t even the problem at the end of the day, he’s a symptom of a much deeper problem that won’t be fixed by just electing a Democrat majority for 8 years straight, much less for one election. The entire US was founded on racism, sexism, and classism, and those were written into the foundation of the electoral college, the senate, the house, and everythting else. The democrats have no incentive to fix that though as long as they keep winning roughly 50% of the time and can get their money and help their corporate backers.
Anyway sorry for the rant lol, I’m just also frustrated by the number of cis people in this post saying dismissive or kinda transphobic things and being upvoted for it lol.
Yeah. It’s pure arrogance. What they refuse to admit is that sometimes the only power minorities have, the only way we can actually influence anything, is to be willing to act as a spoiler if we’re betrayed by our leaders.
Of course, the cis mansplainers in this thread don’t want minorities actually exercising independent power. They want our votes, but not our voices.