Lesbian transphobe Bari Weiss is getting roasted online for saying that Democrats lost the presidential and congressional races because they ran on “niche issues like gender fluidity and ‘defund the police.’” In reality, numerous factors contributed to the party’s losses and Democratic candidates barely mentioned transgender issues during the campaign.
“How can progressives win again? By looking at what went wrong here,” Weiss said during a recent FOX News appearance. “It turns out that running on these extraordinarily niche issues like gender fluidity or defunding the police … feel profoundly out of touch to ordinary Americans. So if [a] ‘progressive’ [campaign] is about, you know, these niche issues that you find in on college campuses and gender studies department, and you want to keep doubling down on that, you’re going to continue to lose.”
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Numerous commenters on X pointed out that Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t run on those issues. The Democratic National Convention didn’t have a transgender speaker and only mentioned trans issues once during a speech by Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Kelley Robinson. Exit polls showed that only 4% of voters ranked trans issues as their most important concern.
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Also, Democratic candidates weren’t campaigning on defunding local police forces, a common refrain from racial justice activists during the Black Lives Matter protests of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
And while Weiss also claimed that Democrats shouldn’t interpret the election results to mean that voters wanted a “fascist regime,” a majority of voters did, in fact, choose a presidential candidate who expressly promised to be a dictator, praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and repeatedly used racism and misogyny during his campaign.
Weiss’ advice marks a troubling trend in the election’s post-mortem in which Democrats blame progressives for their losses. Recently, three Democrats have said that their party should take stronger stands against transgender athletes after Republicans spent $215 million in transphobic attack ads.
Weiss is an opponent of transgender rights. She is the founder of the conservative outlet The Free Press and was given $500,000 by billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow to help launch an “anti-woke” non-profit organization.
The deceptively named organization, The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR), claims to be nonpartisan, but its initial board included transphobic former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, transphobic gay writer Andrew Sullivan, and anti-LGBTQ+ activist Christopher Rufo, The New Yorker reported.
In 2021, FAIR started focusing on so-called “gender ideology,” a right-wing term for acknowledging the existence of transgender people. It hosted a webinar entitled “Gender Ideology: Problems and Pro-Human Solutions,” which featured Abigail Shrier, an anti-trans author who regularly equates trans people with misogynists, child sex predators, and mentally ill people who have succumbed to peer pressure.
While FAIR took stands against “issues of compelled speech and gender stereotypes” — namely, “schools requiring students to state their pronouns, for example, or teaching that boys who gravitate toward dolls and princesses could be girls…. it wasn’t willing to touch other questions, such as whether kids who identify as trans should be allowed to medically transition,” The New Yorker noted.
Though Weiss helped fundraise and attract talent to FAIR, even she eventually distanced herself from the group, saying in June 2021 that she considers the organization “not straightforward” and “not muscular enough,” particularly on issues like trans women in sports.
Last, numerous issues contributed to the Democrats’ losses this election season: Working-class voters, who have increasingly voted for conservatives worldwide, were outraged over post-pandemic inflation, even after that inflation was brought down. Joe Biden is an unpopular incumbent who makes frequent verbal gaffes. Harris, who had never run a successful presidential campaign, was thrust into the nominee role with only 107 days to do so and failed to differentiate herself from Biden’s policies.
“It turns out, running on these extraordinarily niche issues like gender fluidity or defunding the police don’t actually matter—or frankly, feel profoundly out of touch—to ordinary Americans.”@BariWeiss on why Democrats lost so badly. pic.twitter.com/Q7vIggB7sZ
I agree with the Bari here, except for the fact that Kamala didn’t run on those issues.
Bari claims that 50% of the country doesn’t want a fascist regime. Yet they voted for the only candidate who was offering one. It’s hard to refute that.
