08

The most active threads yesterday continued to be related to the election. The most active thread of the day was titled, "Time for reflection as a dem?" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster asks whether, as a result of the resounding Republican victory in the election, Democrats should have a moment of reflection and stop pushing so hard to the left. This thread is 37 pages long, and I don't have time to read much of it, so I am just going to give my own thoughts on this topic. From what I've seen in DCUM discussions, "The Left" normally refers to those who have certain views on social issues rather than economic policies. Those on the left are identified by a commitment to "woke" issues and, especially, support for the rights of trans people. From what I've read in this thread, this is how the term is used in the discussion. In this thread, as well as many other recent threads, posters are eager to attack support for transgender people and blame "the left's" support of trans rights for the election loss. Let me be as clear as possible with regard to this point. For me, trans rights is a moral issue and, as such, not something that I will abandon for political expediency. Moreover, I have no plans to open DCUM to additional anti-trans discussion. If not being able to attack trans rights is a deal-breaker for you, my only response is, "see you". I am sure you will find a website more accommodating to your views elsewhere. The millions of dollars that President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump spent demonizing trans people during the campaign is really the epitome of bullying. He went after a small, marginalized community that is basically harmless. Let's accept the anti-trans narrative for a second and assume that occasionally a trans girl or woman competing in sports deprives a non-trans woman of an award or maybe a scholarship. That is concerning, true, but do you know what is worse? Trump's party's support for anti-abortion laws that are literally killing women. If you are withholding your support for the Democratic Party because your opposition to trans rights is stronger than your concern about women dying, I am skeptical that your true concern is women's rights. Beyond social issues of this sort, Democrats may want to reflect, but could logically come to the opposite conclusion of the original poster. Almost all analysis of voting behavior in this election suggests that inflation was the number one concern. If that is true, Vice President Kamala Harris should have spent more time addressing that issue rather than campaigning with Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban. Harris clearly moved her campaign to the right and ran as a centrist. Perhaps she would have been better served by running on a message closer to what Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders might propose? Imagine that she had spent the bulk of the campaign criticizing the high price of groceries and promising to punish corporate price gouging? Imagine her standing in front of the headquarters of State Farm and demanding that they get car insurance rates under control? Maybe she could have said that one issue on which she differed from President Joe Biden was his deference to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who kept interest rates too high and waited too long to lower them? Wouldn't this have appealed more to the blue-collar workers who abandoned her for Trump than the billionaire Cuban criticizing Harris' own proposal to tax unrealized capital gains? Yes, Democrats should have some self-reflection. Do they want to be nothing more than a warmed-over version of the Republican Party, or do they want to fight for the votes of those they lost in this election? Or, do they simply want to scapegoat transgender people and call it a day?