Top Democratic officials put out a new guide, entitled “Deciding to Win,” that encourages Democrats to be a little more like Republicans on “identity and cultural issues.”
Left: David Axelrod // Public domain, Middle: James Carville // JD Lasica // Wikimedia Commons, Right: David Plouffe // Noam Galai // Wikimedia Commons
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This week, the self-styled centrist group WelcomePAC released a document entitled “Deciding to Win”—advised on by some of the Democratic Party’s most prominent strategists, including David Axelrod, James Carville, and David Plouffe—urging Democrats to act a little more like Republicans on so-called “identity and cultural issues.” The 58-page memo reads like a compendium of the consultant class’s worst instincts, encouraging candidates to become little more than poll-tested avatars and walking focus groups, trading conviction for triangulation. While the document rarely defines which “cultural issues” it means, the few times it does make it clear: queer and transgender people stand to lose the most if this vision of the Democratic Party takes hold.
The document begins with five key pillars for the party. Some of them make a lot of sense, such as “messaging on an economic program centered on lowering costs, growing the economy, creating jobs, and expanding the social safety net,” critiquing “the outsized political and economic influence of” the “ultra-wealthy,” and support for a $15/h minimum wage. Others, though, encourage the party to abandon platforms that have been central to its identity and mission to protect the most vulnerable in society, calling for the party to “Moderate our positions where our agenda is unpopular, including on issues like immigration, public safety, energy production, and some identity and cultural issues.”
While the document rarely defines what “identity and cultural issues” means, the examples make its targets clear. Support for the Equality Act—legislation that would codify gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes under federal law—is cited as proof the party has “moved left.” Another section lists “protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans” as a priority voters supposedly don’t want Democrats to emphasize. Elsewhere, a discussion of how to mobilize voters “sitting on the couch” reveals that the most popular policy among them is “defining sex as binary and based on biology at birth across federal agencies.” Later in the document, it explicitly calls out transgender sports participation as an issue that the party should “moderate” on.
Screenshot of Deciding to Win Chart of “moderate” policies
Imagine a world where Democrats actually heeded this advice. The “define sex as binary” policy—already championed in Republican-led states and now embedded in everything the Trump administration does—has had devastating consequences for transgender Americans. It has stripped trans people of the ability to update their passports, creating serious barriers to travel; defunded organizations that affirm gender diversity; and fueled crackdowns on college campuses that allow trans students to use restrooms matching their gender identity. It’s a policy of bureaucratic erasure, one that threatens to undo decades of hard-won progress—yet it’s presented, almost casually, as a “moderate” position Democrats might adopt to win votes.
It’s a vision of politics that would turn Democrats into little more than Republican Lite—a “big tent” party spacious enough for those who despise us but not for those who most need protection. In that world, Democrats would lose not just the meaning of leadership but the very soul of why the party exists. And it’s a fantasy built on delusion: no amount of fine-tuned messaging or poll-tested calibration will ever transform the party into the perpetual winner these consultants imagine.
We don’t have to imagine what happens when Democrats follow this playbook — we’ve already seen it. In New Hampshire, Democrats capitulated on multiple anti-trans bills, including bans on youth sports participation and gender-affirming surgery, only to suffer one of the party’s worst defeats of the 2024 election cycle, losing 20 seats. By contrast, Democrats in Montana fought hard against similar measures and mounted some of the most visible resistance to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the country, picking up ten seats in the state House—one of the party’s strongest showings nationwide, in a state Trump carried easily. In Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear vetoed anti-trans bills, including a sports ban, and still won reelection in a Trump +31 state. And in New York, a ballot measure enshrining gender identity protections outperformed Kamala Harris’s statewide margin by a wide margin.
Despite the evidence, a faction within the Democratic Party still treats queer and trans people as expendable—convinced that by trimming the edges of equality and tolerating “a little” discrimination, they can win back power. It’s a ruinous illusion. This kind of triangulation doesn’t blunt Republican attacks; it validates them. Every state that once embraced sports bans or “compromise” restrictions has since escalated to banning medical care, censoring books, and policing bathrooms. Capitulation has never advanced LGBTQ+ rights—not in policy, not in public opinion, not once. Democrats aren’t losing because they’ve been too loud or too firm in defending equality; they’re losing because the far right invests in its own moral narrative while Democrats second-guess theirs. The only way forward is to stand unapologetically on principle—as Andy Beshear did in Kentucky, citing it as the very reason for his success—not to chase the approval of consultants who mistake cowardice for strategy and appeasement for leadership.
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Very informative and heart felt. Aron Ra is well known for his thought approach to atheism and science, delivering it in a way that a normal person can understand. The things he says at the end and the pictures he shows makes clear that as he says this is not about protecting anyone but about enforcing bigotry. Hugs
Does this keep us safe? What harm does washing her hands cause? What is more traumatic, a passing trans person in the bathroom washing their hands or the police barging in and arresting someone in the bathroom. I can see the mistake she made. She thinks they know in their hearts that it is wrong to make bans on trans people. No they are sure their god, one with the same name as her own god, but their god is the hateful vengeful fundamentalist Old Testament god while her is a loving Jesus. Hugs.
Left – Wikimedia Commons, Khrystinasnell // Right: Marcy Rheintgen, selfie
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When 20-year-old college student Marcy Rheintgen made her yearly spring break trip to her grandparents’ property in Florida, she said she felt at peace — until March 19, when police escorted her out of the bathroom of the State Capitol Building and placed her in handcuffs. Evidently, Rheintgen had violated a 2023 state law criminalizing trans people who use government-owned public restrooms that align with their gender.
Tampa Bay Times reporter Romy Ellenbogen accompanied Rheintgen to the Capitol. When they arrived, several officers were stationed outside the women’s restroom doors. They warned her not to enter the women’s restroom. Draped in a white, frilly dress and a pink bow, Rheintgen went in anyway and washed her hands.
That’s when police entered the restroom and told Rheintgen she was being detained. A devout Catholic, she had wanted to take a moment to pray the rosary, but she never got the chance.
After spending less than 60 seconds in the women’s restroom, Rheintgen said, she was charged with trespassing with a warning.
Meanwhile, her rosary was confiscated as an officer from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement handcuffed and detained Rheintgen, searched her person and her vehicle, and then shuttled her to the Leon County Detention Facility, where she stayed overnight in the men’s ward. If convicted, she could spend up to 60 days incarcerated.
The FDLE did not respond to a request for comment.
About a week before her trek, she sent about a hundred and sixty print letters to Florida lawmakers announcing she would engage in the time-honored practice of civil disobedience: She would use the women’s restroom at the Florida State Capitol. She named her date and time.
The letter sent to Florida legislators. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
“I know that as a transgender woman, this means I will probably be arrested. I am violating laws because I personally believe it to be wrong.
“I’m not a political activist,” she told Erin in the Morning. “I’m just a normal college student who thinks this law is wrong.”
The letters included a photo of herself so that officials could identify her. “I understand I could go to jail for up to sixty days in a men’s prison, where if the statistics are true, I would likely be raped.”
She writes that going to jail would “uproot her life,” but this was a risk she was willing to take:
“I understand that if you’re receiving this letter, you’re part of the Florida Bicameral Legislature, which means you’re probably one of the people who wrote this law or voted for it. I know that you know in your heart that this law is wrong and unjust. I know that you know in your heart that it’s wrong to arrest me and jail me for sixty days for simply using the bathroom. I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are human too, and that you can’t arrest us away. I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are no different from you or anybody else. I know that you know in your heart that the same people that go to church with you, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same schools, root for the same sports teams, watch the same movies and pray to the same God as you cannot be all bad. I know that you know that I have dignity. That’s why I know that you won’t arrest me.”
Signing off, she added: “Pray for me.”
“I’m a really religious person,” she told Erin in the Morning. She’s a devout Catholic who describes herself as a political centrist, with an appreciation for “family values” but a soft spot for Dorothy Day, the prolific Catholic leftwing activist.
A police affidavit she shared with Erin in the Morning — with her deadname (blurred out below), and the wrong pronouns listed — otherwise corroborates most all of her story.
Photo Rheintgen’s affidavit, but her deadname has been blurred out for privacy. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
Rheintgen’s telling is also corroborated by reports from the Tampa Bay Times journalist who accompanied Rheintgen to the bathroom.
A selfie. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
“I actually wanted to move to Florida when I was older, growing up, but I don’t know if I can do that now, ” she said. She fondly remembers her favorite beaches and bologna sandwiches with her grandparents. But now, it seems, her “home away from home” isn’t safe for her.
“I don’t want attention. I just want people to see this law and how crazy it is to put people like us in jail. I was so terrified,” she said. She admits she hadn’t consulted legal or advocacy organizations before the endeavor; she didn’t know what to expect. “They were treating me like I murdered someone — but I just used the wrong bathroom.”
Rheintgen said she was motivated to act after seeing the anti-trans legislation surge throughout the United States, and when she read about Hunter Schafer, the Euphoria actress, who was issued a “male” passport despite being a woman. “She’s a personal hero of mine,” Rheintgen said. The fear and the vitriol she saw play out over the news cycle brought her to a breaking point.
While bills like bathroom bans and drag bans have been sweeping the country in recent years, the criminalization of gender diverse people is by no means new. Black and brown trans women, especially, have been routinely criminalized for decades under the guise of “solicitation” or “loitering” ordinances, even in a so-called liberal stronghold like New York. The phenomenon is so pervasive that it has been dubbed the “Walking While Trans Ban.”
Jon Harris Maurer, Public Policy Director of Equality Florida, emphasized that the bathroom bans are just the latest attempt by the state’s GOP to eradicate trans people from public life. “These are hard working, tax paying individuals who are our family, neighbors, and colleagues,” he told Erin in the Morning. “Weaponizing bathroom access in a place like the State Capitol is an antidemocratic effort to block them from directly participating in government while simultaneously stripping their rights behind closed doors.”
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Remember that Mace doesn’t believe in her rhetoric, she just wants the media attention. She wants the adoration she thinks that having people paying attention to her gives to her. She is a child desperately acting out to get the adults to pay attention to her. She is the child who never accepted she was at fault or mistaken but wants to blame everyone else including those pretend causes in her head alone. She was for trans rights, a big supporter of LGBTQ+ equality and inclusion when she felt it gained her media attention. Then when she saw the attention the Libs of TikTok and other haters on social media get, she waited for the opportunity to create enough spectacle for the spotlight to land on her. She tweeted over 500 times in 2 days on the bird site trying to milk the situation for views and clicks, often forgetting to switch to her burner accounts to praise her own stance. But now the drama has died down and no one is looking so she doesn’t care. She has to find the new outrage to pounce on. Maybe she will again throw a fit, and try to get some of the attention she got the first time, but she knows she has to wait, as it would be overwhelmed by current events. No if she still wants it, she will wait until about a couple of months in then claim she couldn’t use a bathroom because it is full of trans women. Hugs
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Josh Fiallo
Evelyn Hockstein / REUTERS
Nancy Mace’s hopes of banning transgender women from sharing a bathroom with her on Capitol Hill appear dashed for now.
The South Carolina Republican’s controversial bathroom ban was not included in the GOP’s House rules package unveiled this week—a surprise omission less than two months after Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly assured Mace it would be included.
The resolution was all the rage in November, with Mace pulling out different theatrics to drum up support for the ban. That included her using a bullhorn to read Miranda rights to sit-in protesters and using anti-transgender slurs to reference them.
Mace admitted her ban was to target the newly-elected Rep. Sarah McBride, a transgender Democrat from Delaware. Mace’s office did not respond to questions texted by the Daily Beast on Friday.
Johnson announced on Nov. 20 that “all single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings […] are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.” This suggested he backed Mace’s proposal even if he was not as fervent in his public comments, but it is unclear why the ban didn’t make into the latest rules package.
“We welcome all new members with open arms who are duly elected representatives of the people,” Johnson said the day prior. “I believe it’s a command that we treat all persons with dignity and respect.”
Mace doesn’t appear to have any bad blood over the omission. She posted Friday morning that Johnson still had her vote to remain House Speaker.
“A vote for @SpeakerJohnson is a vote for President Trump’s America First agenda,” she wrote. “After the last few days of chaos we’ve seen in these tumultuous times, we need steady leadership and continuity. We need to stick together and get to work. We don’t have any time to waste.”
Rep. Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, is the first openly transgender member of Congress. / Bill Clark/Getty Images
While McBride was the resolution’s target, the ban would have applied to any trans person in the Capitol, including staffers and visitors
McBride, the first openly-trans member of Congress, has not commented on the ban’s omission. Back in November, she did not try to go toe-to-toe with Mace on the matter—instead asserting that she would follow whatever the House rules were.
“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” she wrote in a statement. “I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them.”
House Democrats are brushing off Republican attacks on Rep.-elect Sarah McBride after some GOP members made clear they would attempt to keep McBride from using the women’s restrooms in the Capitol. That’s because McBride told them to.
By Tuesday morning, Democrats had a clear message: Republican attacks on trans people were a distraction from other issues. Sources told NOTUS that McBride had made obvious in meetings that she wanted her colleagues to talk about policy — and what Republicans weren’t doing — instead.
The congresswoman-elect, one lawmaker said, reiterated that Republicans’ messaging was a “distraction” and that this isn’t “her first rodeo” dealing with anti-trans rhetoric. Another House Democrat said they’ve personally talked “extensively” with McBride and “she doesn’t want to be seen as a victim.”
Our incoming president elect remains butthurt over a Vanity Fair article (small hands) from over 30 years ago.
McBride brushes off direct personal attacks and wants us to focus on policy. Our incoming president wants SNL taken off the air because they told jokes.
In 2018 Virginia’s Danica Roem was the first out trans person elected to any state legislature, as a Delegate. Last year she was elected as a state Senator, and when that happened she became the second in the US to be elected to a state Senate, after Sarah McBride’s election in 2020. Interesting both mid-Atlantic, soon everywhere hopefully.
Greene and her ilk are beyond pathetic. As it happens, I’ve worked with and written about more than a usual share of trans people.
Their journeys and, in some cases, what they’ve endured to live their lives authentically and with joy are far greater than this.
McBride can let them spin in the sewer of their ignorance, immaturity, and hatred while McBride focuses on being a grownup. I applaud her response, and I have to say I’m not the least bit surprised.
The problem is that Democrats can’t avoid talking about trans people because Republicans won’t let us. We aren’t bringing it up. I don’t think it’s a big issue. Yes, it affects trans people but no one else is harmed by a small percentage of our population being treated fairly and decently.
Texas is a good example. Ted Cruz made trans girls playing sports a core issue in the campaign. Allred tried to avoid that topic but had to address it. And it didn’t matter. Never mind that Cruz used images of cis-gendered girls from Oregon in his ad because this is just not a problem in Texas. Nope. That’s not scary enough for the knuckle-dragging redneck assholes that show up to vote in Texas.
I agree we shouldn’t bring it up, but it’s naive to think that it’s an issue we can just ignore because Republicans are not going to shut up about it because they think it helped them in this year. Look for several more rounds of this shit. Trans girls in sports is the new gay marriage.
Please listen to the audio as the written part doesn’t fully capture what she said and why she said it. This is also in a post Ali made from friend Janet at her blog which I will link below. Janet is an amazing woman and I enjoy reading her blog. But AOC mentioned what this is about is targeting people who do not fit the people on the right view of who looks like a man to them or who looks like a woman to them.
Also Johnson said this was not a hardship for McBride as she could use all the public bathrooms or I guess they have private bathrooms in their offices? Well why couldn’t Mace also do the same or use her own bathroom rather than making the spectacle and forcing all trans people to be targeted with suspicion from people. She was the only one complaining? Well if he told her that they couldn’t make a big deal of it, Johnson wouldn’t be able to push his Christian cred and Mace wouldn’t be able to carry on for a week on a crusade against someone not harming her in any way. Hard to fund raise off a threat that doesn’t exist unless they can make it seem like one. Hugs.
AOC comes out swinging against a Nancy Mace for targeting Sarah McBride."They're doing this so that Nancy Mace can … fundraise off an email. They're not doing this to protect people. They're endangering women, they're endangering girls of all kinds. And everybody should reject it. It's gross."
Left: David Axelrod // Public domain, Middle: James Carville // JD Lasica // Wikimedia Commons, Right: David Plouffe // Noam Galai // Wikimedia Commons
Scottie's Playtime 