Character
The Film "The American President" seems so divorced from the reality of the Trump era that it seems to belong to a bygone era. Yet one of the film's key scenes when Michael Douglas playing the role of US President declares that "it is entirely about character" is still relevant today, especially to the Democrats (and also to the UK Labour Party).
Reading Julia Serano's (as always) outstanding article on Substack about the Democrats throwing trans people under a bus to try and get more votes, alongside Peter Shamshiri's article, which is more electorally focussed, there seems to be a Quiet Part that needs saying beyond the electoral calculus...
As a minor digression here I would question the size of the trans vote, which both seem to suggest is very small - around 1%. More recent research suggests that the number of trans/non-cis people is higher than this at 2.34%. I am also of the opinion that the trans vote is also higher than the number of trans people; partners, relatives, children, even extended family, as well as other members of the LGBTQ+ communities (although it has to be said here that this is a much harder figure to calculate; some trans people's partners are also trans, and while many parents tend to be anti-trans immediately after their child comes out to them, most come round in the end, with some becoming great trans allies). So for both these reasons, the 1% assumption is in my view a significant underestimate.
Back to my main argument here and I suspect readers will already see the direction this is going. The Quiet Part here is character. So when a Democrat like James Talarico pivots to throwing trans people under the bus, in my view the most important part of this is not what his policy wonks/advisors/creepy behind-the-scenes people have dragged into the electoral calculus, or even the size of the trans vote, but what it says about the content of Talarico's character. And what it says about Talarico's character is not only not good but it clashes with the "real Christian" image he has been trying to construct for himself, a doubly problematic character flaw that includes diahonesty.
So not only is joining in with the MAGA Republican Party's genocidal anti-trans attacks likely to be electorally unproductive, it may well be counterproductive as it reveals the duplicitous characters of the transphobic candidates in the Democratic Party. This was underlined by Newsom's attitude, not merely to trans people but also to homeless people. However what his, and Talarico's and other's actions say about them as people, and their characters, is probably the most significant effect of this. This is not just because they are alienating one part (and a potentially larger part than they realise) of their electoral coalition in the hope of scraping a few votes from MAGA bigots, but because members of other minority groups forming that electoral coalition see what they do and start to wonder whether, when the chips are down, this person is going to defend them.
This is reflected in the UK also, where Andy Burnham, the "new" Prime Minister, has implemented two massive anti-trans ordinances; a segregationist policy and a Trans Section 28+ to facilitate bullying and worse of trans children in schools. This makes him - by a very, very wide margin - the most transphobic Prime Minister the UK has ever had. Burnham flip-flopped on this issue and changed his mind from being (apparently) trans-supportive to being transphobic in the space of just four days. It is significant that Burnham, despite only having been in power for barely two months, is rapidly becoming Marmite. There is still a significant proportion of the electorate that approves of him, but the proportion that disapproves has almost caught up already. For a politician who, character-wise, set great store by - supposedly - being different from his predecessor, his duplicitous, unprincipled, craven and transphobic character flaws are already undermining his popularity, and on a range of issues.
Character is important, not just because people need leaders who have principles that guide their actions, but because, especially on the left, people want politicians who will stand up for them. If they aren't going to stand up for trans people, they aren't going to stand up for others either.
