@mattsheffield@mastodon.social
2026-10-30 02:36 UTC
Despite knowing all of this, however, some Democrats have gotten spooked on trans issues because they have mistaken correlation for causation.
After Glenn Youngkin won the VA governor race in 2021, the fact that he made anti-trans bigotry a key message was wrongly assumed to be causation.
The much more likely reason Youngkin won was that he was from the opposing party to the then-president, and those candidates always do much better since people often vote against rather than for parties.
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@mattsheffield@mastodon.social 2026-10-30 02:37
But once Youngkin won, the narrative in the political class became fixed: He did it by bashing trans people. Believing this to be true, Republicans began making anti-trans bigotry the primary message of their campaigns. Trump cranked up the transphobia in 2024 and once again, people credited it for his victory. In reality, most incumbents across the world were thrown out due to post-pandemic inflation: https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/11/14/incumbents-are-losing-around-the-world-not-just-the-u-s