In the final months of the presidential campaign, Trump’s team made the vice president’s past support for taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries on federal prisoners and detained immigrants a central focus.
One ad ended with the following statement: “Kamala is for them. “President Trump is for you.”
The Trump campaign spent more than $21 million on transgender issues ads in the first half of October, according to data compiled by AdImpact. This is about a third of all advertising spending and almost double the amount spent on immigration and inflation.
This is the kind of investment a campaign makes when it has hard data showing that its ads are moving public opinion.
Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate lawmaker from Massachusetts, said his party must rethink its approach to cultural issues after Trump’s convincing victory.
Moulton told the New York Times: “Democrats spend too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the problems facing many Americans., external “I have two young daughters, and I don’t want them to be run over on the playground by men or former male athletes. But as a Democrat, I’m afraid to say that.”
Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, reject this characterization and argue that defending minority rights has always been a core value of the party. Rep. John Moran wrote in response to, external: “If you’re going to use election loss as an opportunity to attack the most vulnerable, you should find another job.”
Political strategist Mike Madrid offered a harsh assessment of where the Democratic coalition stands today.
“The Democratic Party was premised on what was an unholy alliance between working-class people of color and wealthy white progressives,” Madrid said. “The only glue that held that coalition together was anti-republicanism.”
When the glue ran out, he said, the party was ready to lose.
