Okay, I’ll talk a bit about the election. In November, many people speculated on why Democrats lost the election. This has largely been an exercise in confirmation bias–everyone thinks reason Democrats lost is because they didn’t adopt *their* preferred politics, whatever those politics may be. I’m sorry to say, that’s not how evidence works.

One of the arguments has been that Harris lost points because she’s pro-trans. This is just another example of confirmation bias, and the evidence is found wanting.

To begin with, is Kamala Harris pro-trans? Where did people get that idea from? Republicans ran political ads attacking Kamala Harris for making pro-trans statements in the past, and the ads may or may not have been effective.

But here’s what doesn’t make sense to me. We’re ostensibly trying to give advice to Democrats about what they could do differently. But instead of pointing at the actions of Democrats, we’re pointing to ads made by Republicans? Republicans will say whatever they want, whether it’s true or false. Kamala Harris could have taken the anti-trans stance that certain leftists want her to take, and it’s far from clear this would have stopped the Republicans from running ads saying otherwise. I think any anti-trans stance in Harris’ platform would have been more widely known among leftists, who would not have been happy about it.

So here’s the political calculus. If Kamala took an explicitly anti-trans stance, perhaps a few swing voters would have swung her way after learning that the Republican anti-trans ads were inaccurate. (Am I to suppose that of all the inaccurate things said by Republicans, this is the one that would have broken the camel’s back?) On the other side, it would have caused some flighty leftist voters to stay home–this is a thing that flighty leftists are measurably known to do. What would have been larger: the political gains or the political losses? We just don’t know, but personally it defies my intuition that an anti-trans strategy was correct.

Let’s look at the context behind Kamala’s past statements on trans people, as discussed in this article. The context was gender-affirming care for prisoners. In 2015, Kamala Harris represented the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, at a time when it was fighting a case (inherited from the previous attorney general) to block gender affirming care. You read that right, Harris was (however indirectly) associated with a case trying to block gender affirming care, not to allow it. But later in 2015, the department reached a settlement in a separate case to allow gender affirming care for prisoners.

In 2019, as Harris was campaigning for Biden as vice-president, she was obliged to defend her record to people who were concerned about anti-trans actions–because as it turns out, having an even ambiguously anti-trans record was a political liability for her. She stated “I had a host of clients that I was obligated to defend and represent and I couldn’t fire my clients,” and said she “worked behind the scenes to ensure that the Department of Corrections would allow transitioning inmates to receive medical attention that they required, needed, and deserved.”

In the 2024 election campaign, she has not made any strong statements about trans people that I know of.

So the theory here, is that maybe Harris would have gained some political points in 2024, if either she had refused to defend her record in 2019, or if leftists hadn’t asked her to defend her record in the first place? Talk about non-actionable “advice”! We’re supposed to change the past, on the theory that we should have been looking further ahead. How about we look ahead now, and recognize that the younger generations are increasingly pro-trans?

Also, Kamala is right about prisoners. I think it offends people’s sensibilities because they don’t like being humane to prisoners in general. Basically any explicit statement in defense of prisoners tends to be a losing political move. Whatever we’re doing for prisoners now, we should be doing less than that, eh? Deprive them of the “luxury” of medical care. Beat them, starve them, joke about prison rape because we can’t stand to think about it seriously.

I would like be able to threaten to withhold my support, should Democrats start adopting anti-trans politics. But my threat would not be credible. Flighty leftist voters clearly exist, but I am not one of them. For years I have expressed a commitment to vote against Republicans across the board, even when the opposing Democrats are bad (as occasionally happens down-ballot). For me, Republicans trying to subvert democracy is a superceding issue. But among competing Democratic candidates, I for one vote very strongly in favor of prisoners’ and trans rights.

I am willing to consider the possibility that trans issues are presently a liability for Democrats. Sometimes, the winning political strategy is to take the morally incorrect position. Case in point, in this election, the winning strategy was to be Donald Trump. But how do we know that an anti-trans strategy would boost Democrats more than it would hurt their base? Even if trans issues are a liability, how do we know it’s a significant liability? And even if it were a liability, how is it even actionable?

Now excuse me, I’m going to go back to not talking about the election, because these post-election hot-takes have been unsatisfactory. This post was brought to you by Julia Serano’s coordinated action–although I took a different angle, because I’m a cat that can’t be herded.