Liberals should defend civil rights — not cower based on election results
“How we treat transgender Americans and teach U.S. history are neither trivial matters nor “distractions.”
Since Vice President Kamala Harris’s election defeat last month, a new talking point has become increasingly prominent among Democratic politicians and strategists — both centrists and progressives. Republican efforts to limit transgender rights, these Democrats argue, are a “distraction,” an attempt to essentially trick Democrats into focusing on issues that don’t affect most Americans.
I’m very leery of this distraction thinking. It’s true that around election time, Republican politicians act as though transgender girls playing sports or the teaching of critical race theory are the most important issues in America, because they know liberal positions on some of these matters are unpopular. But how we treat transgender Americans or teach U.S. history are not trivial matters. They are fundamental questions of equality and human dignity, as well as policy. Minority groups and their interests should be forcefully defended by Democratic politicians who don’t live in swing areas and, more important, by progressive activist groups, left-leaning news organizations and other parts of our broader civil society.
After being chosen last week as the new chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Greg Casar (Texas), told NBC News, “The progressive movement needs to change. We need to re-emphasize core economic issues every time some of these cultural war issues are brought up.”
“So when we hear Republicans attacking queer Americans again, I think the progressive response needs to be that a trans person didn’t deny your health insurance claim, a big corporation did — with Republican help. We need to connect the dots for people that the Republican Party obsession with these culture war issues is driven by Republicans’ desire to distract voters and have them look away while Republicans pick their pocket,” he added.
Following Perry Bacon Jr.
Casar isn’t an establishment Democrat trying to pass the buck for his wing of the party’s role in Harris’s defeat or a centrist who just hates the party’s left. Before being elected to the Austin City Council and then Congress, he was a labor rights activist helping construction workers get longer breaks from the Texas heat while on their jobs. I have no beef with him. America would be better off if we had 535 Greg Casars in Congress.
And the broader point he is making is correct. Republicans are able to win in swing areas while pushing an economic agenda (tax cuts for the wealthy, Medicaid cuts) that polls suggest most voters strongly oppose, in part because the GOP turns elections into referendums on social and cultural issues on which Americans are more closely divided or favor the conservative position.
This is a long-standing Republican strategy. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan tapped into voter frustrations with increased school integration and affirmative action while pursuing more conservative economic agendas.
So, Casar and other Democrats are right that the party needs to point out when Republican officials are trying to downplay their fiscal conservatism.
But casting Republicans’ positions on social issues as mere distractions minimizes what conservatives are doing. There is a focused, coordinated agenda on social issues that many Republican officials are just as committed to as cutting taxes. Republican-led states across the country are severely curtailing abortion rights and access. They are banning transgender Americans from getting the health care they want, participating in sports and even using public bathrooms. They are restricting or eliminating Black history, sociology and other courses that challenge conservative doctrines, as well as programs to increase diversity and inclusion on campuses and in the workplace.
Democrats aren’t going to be able to sit out these fights on social issues, because Republicans are full steam ahead on them. I’m not exactly sure how Harris should have responded to the barrage of Republican ads attacking her for pledging support for gender-affirming care for people in prison and undocumented immigrants in 2019. But trying to duck the issue at first was probably a mistake. (It’s worth noting that Trump campaign officials say their commercials linking Harris to President Joe Biden’s economic policies were more damaging than ones in which Harris emphasized her pro-trans bona fides.)
Republicans banned Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Delaware), the first transgender person elected to Congress, from using women’s bathrooms in the Capitol even before she officially started her tenure. I assume the Trump administration will push a host of other anti-trans provisions next year.
These are real issues happening to real people in American culture and society, even if Republicans are demagoguing them for political reasons. They are not just distractions, and liberals need to come up with real positions on them. Whether children should be able to get gender-affirming care is being debated not only in the United States but also in Europe. Sports leagues are trying to figure out whether and when transgender athletes should be allowed to play in same-sex sports that match their gender identity. The state of Florida is trying to reduce the number of students taking sociology classes so it can lay off sociology professors, whom Republicans view as overly left-wing.
And these issues matter. If transgender people can’t go to bathrooms, play sports and get health care based on their preferred gender identity, they are being denied civil rights. America already has a terrible history of using bathroom restrictions to signal disapproval of a certain group: Black people in the Jim Crow era. Americans who are deeply informed about the country’s history of anti-Black racism tend to support policies that address remaining racial inequalities. Republicans oppose such policies, so they oppose greater education on racial issues, too.
I understand that Democrats running in red or purple areas might not be able to be full-throated supporters on many of these social issues, particularly transgender rights, if they want to win elections. People speaking for the whole party, such as Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (New York) and even Casar, might also be constrained. The same goes for Harris as a presidential candidate or future Democratic Oval Office hopefuls.
But there are thousands of Democratic officials at the local, state and federal levels who have almost no chance of being defeated by a Republican in an election. They can be full-throated defenders of transgender Americans and others from minority groups who are targets of the current Republican Party. This is not a zero-sum situation; these Democrats can also be extremely populist on economic issues.
Most important, left-leaning organizations and groups such as the ACLU and the NAACP that are independent of the Democratic Party and not formally taking part in electoral politics must be stalwart defenders of minorities and civil rights.
I am not suggesting that every liberal group must defend every DEI program or pro-transgender policy. There are sincere policy disagreements on the details of these issues. But liberals should not be scared of defending their core values, one of which is aligning with groups that don’t have much power in society.
Some center-left Democrats argue that the actions of left-leaning groups and Democrats in very liberal areas tar the whole party and make it harder for swing-state Democrats to win. I’m skeptical that this is true. I suspect voters are largely evaluating the candidates in their states, not what faraway activists are saying.
And the notion that ACLU lawyers or members of Congress from Massachusetts should prioritize their guesses of what will motivate swing voters in Wisconsin every two years instead of strongly defending the rights of transgender people or immigrants is crazy. Democrats running in swing districts and states are accountable to those voters. But 75 million people (the number who voted for Harris) should not be acting like political strategists, weighing whether to grant people basic dignity and equality against polling data.
Instead, most liberals should assume the role of activists and organizers, working collectively to defend the civil rights of all. Many people on the left think fondly of the civil rights protests of the 1960s. This is their time to live up to that tradition. African Americans are very far from reaching full equality in America, and the rights of immigrants and transgender Americans are in even more peril. These fights are not distractions from the real issues — they are some of the realest issues we face as a nation.“
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