Notably, Leonhardt makes a weak case in his advice for Vice President Harris that many will view as unsurprising. The link chosen to support his claim that Democrats are “well to the public’s left” on transgender issues merely directs readers to another New York Times article by Pamela Paul, which has already been fact-checked and found to contain false and misleading information. The Pamela Paul story falls far short of supporting the idea that the public is significantly opposed to transgender issues.
While some polls show opposition to aspects like sports participation, more recent surveys indicate that the public is against bans on gender-affirming care and does not view transgender issues as particularly salient or worth legislating over. Gallup, Navigator, and the LA Times have all released polls within the last three months showing that the American public views trans issues as a major distraction, opposes forced outing policies, and rejects bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. In Gallup’s case, multiple ways of asking about gender-affirming care bans did not affect the result.
If Vice President Harris wishes to follow advice that will win her elections, listening to Leonhardt may be misguided. Many politicians have previously attempted to run on anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ platforms with little success. For instance, Moms for Liberty and Project 1776, organizations promoting fiercely anti-LGBTQ+ and conservative policies, lost 70% of their races in the 2023 school board elections. Similar forces saw anti-trans politicians defeated in Michigan, Virginia, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and many other swing states.
Fuck the New York Times. They have routinely platformed bigots and claimed “well we have to represent both sides.” My rights are not something to be debated. Harris has been far more supportive of trans folk than I realized, I don’t think she would do this. But with this article and the insistent need for the New York Times to platform transphobic assholes, I think I’m finally going to talk my mother into getting rid of her subscription.
If anyone wants to learn more about Harris and her not so mixed background on trans rights, here’s a great article my partner found recently and shared with me. I’m using a Tumblr link to get around the medium paywall and I don’t know how to get around the paywall otherwise. Here’s that direct medium link if anyone can get around it.
Yes! But fuck Sulzberger in particular…
Luckily the article itself is older than the medium paywall:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201031110515/https://medium.com/@courtneybswanson/kamala-harriss-record-on-trans-rights-isn-t-mixed-8101b2a0aa94
Thank you so much for this, I can now bookmark that one to use in the future.
Unfortunately the archived article cuts off at the same place as the paywalled article.
I was, however, able to read it in full by copying your link to the original into a simple plain text converter (in this case I used txtify.it). Thanks for the article recommendation btw— I learned a lot!
I saw that with one of the more recent archived versions and went back to 2020 to find one that worked. Did it still happen with the one I linked to?
Definitely keeping your solution saved, though.
I was sure it happened to the one you linked to, but in trying to replicate it now, I’m not getting the same result, so it must have been user error on my part. My apologies. The site was kinda buggy trying to load on mobile and you’re probably right— I’m guessing I clicked on something that sent me to a more recently archived version.
Here’s an archived version of that medium link that doesn’t cut off: https://archive.is/FNqUx (and that loads super fast)