Mick Hartley

As Charles Lane notes in the Free Press, The Trans Issue Is Still Democrats’ Biggest Loser:

The 2026 midterms were a referendum on President Donald Trump’s performance in office and that of the Republican-controlled Congress. The verdict was overwhelmingly and deservedly negative. The GOP now faces a yearslong rebuilding task that will require the party to reconsider extreme ideological positions that alienated voters.

Yet in the background of that metaphorical referendum were a series of literal referendums at the state level, which let the public speak just as clearly. Many of these asked voters to pass judgment on a cherished ideological tenet of the Democratic Party’s progressive base: transgender rights. And almost without exception, voters turned their thumbs down.

Ballot measures in five states—Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Washington, and Missouri—asked voters to enshrine rules related to gender identity in their laws or constitutions. Some proposed that youth and college sports teams should be organized by biological sex, with transgender women athletes not allowed to compete in girls’ and women’s sports. Some proposed that gender transition surgery not be performed on children under 18….

In other words, several of the same state electorates that expressed their disapproval of MAGA by voting in Democrats by wide margins also rejected the Brahmin left’s pet cause. An underrated question coming out of November 3 is how the suddenly ascendant party responds. Will it definitively isolate the ultra-progressives who have so far held so much clout?

It’s plausibly claimed that the trans issue was a significant factor in Trump’s election victory. Have the Dems learned their lesson at last? Or could they continue to gift the Republicans with this clear open goal?

If Republicans play their cards more astutely in the future, their position on these issues could help them rebuild support, even in the 19 blue states that don’t yet require that youth sports be organized by biological sex and in the 22 mostly blue states (Alaska is the red exception) that don’t yet restrict gender-changing medical interventions for minors….

Meanwhile, progressive activist groups are as determined as ever to block laws protecting children from irreversible surgeries or unfair competition from trans athletes, no matter how popular or commonsensical they are. Teachers unions, Planned Parenthood, and the American Civil Liberties Union anchored opposition to the state ballot measures (in Washington, they organized with the slogan “NO HATE in WA State”). Many Democratic politicians are still following their lead.

Tuesday’s results suggest, however, that the power of such sanctimonious rhetoric is waning. One reason so many Democrats got on the wrong side of public opinion is that their progressive base shamed, or tried to shame, those who disagreed into silence, creating a misleading impression of what public opinion really was.

Fortunately, we have a secret ballot in this country, which means that there is still one arena that’s off limits to “cancel culture.” At the ballot box, people can say what they really think. And most of them think that children should not be subjected to life-altering medical interventions or demoralizing, unfair competition for the sake of an out-of-the-mainstream ideology.

If the Democrats continue with their obeisance to trans militancy – and their recent turn towards welcoming Islamist candidates – then their current upturn in the polls may well prove to be less permanent than they hope.