The problem with Democrats winning elections (since 2016) has been the ideological purity tests their social-left demands from candidates, rendering them toxic to independents.
It'd be nice if internet SJWs grew up and realized that winning elections with "don't ask don't tell" is better than losing elections with overly socially progressive platforms.
It feels like a large chunk of the party would rather lose an election smugly than win it with compromise.
Republicans since 2014 have been in somewhat of the same mutually exclusive bind, which is why Trump emerged as the primary candidate. Turns out reconciling mutually exclusive promises is possible if you're willing to say things without intending to do them and bank on charisma and a cult of personality.
Tl;dr - Democrats need to cure their case of SJW Tourette's. When someone asks a question about trans rights, say "I support equality for all Americans, because that's what our Constitution promises" and leave it at that.
And I'd say the excesses are equal part tech bro neoreactionaries + nativist Heritage / Project 2025 folks, each of which contributed their own toxic ingredients.
It's rapidly becoming apparent that Trump doesn't actually care about much ideologically and generally blows whichever way the last person in the room asked him to.
Democrats should be diving into the details on progressive economic platforms every chance they get, as wholly, messily, and authentically as they can.
But yes, they should refuse to jump on progressive social landmines their opponents lay out.
What's your alternative and better suggestion?
Taking potshots is easy: putting down your own marker is hard.
To add: Regardless of how left-leaning or right-leaning any given dem candidate is, they shot themselves in the foot with an AK by a lack of focus on pragmatic economic issues, the border and on absurdly sticking to a doddering president-as-candidate until it was far too late despite all obvious indicators of his lack of fitness for a second term (then so quickly switching tack along with so many of their media and pundit followers that it gave lots of credit to Trumps ranting about the media's lock-step pro-dem bias.) This was plainly insulting to way too many fence-sitting voters who might have otherwise voted democrat.
Then yes, there's the SJW issue and the completely unfounded amount of obeisance to it that many democrats and their supporters expressed. This may not have been a problem for their core of voters, but then, that's not where elections get won.
Then yes, there's the SJW issue and the completely unfounded amount of obeisance to it that many democrats and their supporters expressed.
For context, I've been watching UK, US, AU, and CA news and politics for decades and my observation is that relatively few on left | liberal | progressive could honestly be described as all in, full on, brain washed followers of SJW issues, trans rights, drag shows, et al. The majority didn't seem to deeply care much past the basic human rights issues of everyone should be able to find a bathroom and most people should be allowed to express themselves.
Almost without exception everything I heard about SJW issues originated from right wing, post Reagan Republican, neo Conservative, Fox | Sky Media type sources.
Without taking a side, just observing the political strategy aspect, this was a strong winning tactic for the US right - hammer endlessly on essentially meaningless issues and raise the perceived threat level to sway the masses, offering a solution to breadcrumbs in the bedding type issues that now rank as empire ending catastrophic confrontations.
I'm sorry, but enough of exactly this was visible on the cultural side of support for democrat social politics that it can't just be ignored. It had its impact. Too many sacred cows were encased in too many groupthink bubbles of rigid "permissible" discourse and this was heavily associated specifically with the kind of social circles that democrat politicians are most popular with and pander to very often. For many voters on the margins, this caused a reactionary dislike that led to lost votes.
Take for example the illegial immigration issue. This was something that many voters of all stripes (including many Afican American and even latino American voters) took very seriously for reasons they thought very valid to their contexts. Often, however, stating that you worried about it would be smeared as a part of being a racist in general, and that must have felt bloody insulting, even ridiculous to a hefty number of people who simply viewed it as a baseless character attack.
We've been through the political immigration hysteria, "Stop the boats" and "Babies overboard" tipped elections and spawned offshore processing policies that were the envy of Trump v1.0.
That said, hyping fear of trans people following the lead of US podcast warriors pretty much fell flat on it's face here, burned out in disaster, much to the chagrin of aussie neo christians (small c) who tried to fly it up the pole.
At the end of the day the actual demographic volume of those under the tails of the bimodal sex and gender distributions are too small to give Aussies pause but apparently so great they terrify the US conservative into embracing .. umm, whatever this current failing of US democracy will go by in hindsight.
( Franklin, in foresight, referred to it thus:
I believe farther that this is likely to be well administred for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
)