Boogeyman proves past its expiration date

Here's a delicious take on one aspect of Tuesday's blowout election. Take this Elon!

The Secret Weapon That Went Pffft: The GOP’s Anti-Trans Attack Ads

... while the American public wasn’t supportive of transgender people, most didn’t really care about the issue because it didn’t affect them or anyone they knew. Republicans found out that you can only wave a boogeyman around for so long before people stopped believing him/her/them.

... YouGov polling that found that the public trusts Democrats (52 percent) on transgender issues more than Republicans (23 percent). In other words, the people who rated transgender issues as a top priority were more likely to be pro-transgender Democrats than anti-trans Republicans. The GOP bet that they could win an election based on fear and loathing directed at less than 1 percent of the population, on an irrelevant issue that Democrats care more about than the Republican base does.

... Polling suggests that when pressed on the issue, it’s Democrats, not Republicans, who were more likely to say transgender issues are a priority. Additionally, polling indicates that the public thought Republicans were talking way too much about this issue. Regardless of whether Democratic candidates threw their transgender constituents under the bus, however, Republicans still attempted to smear them with accusations of supporting trans people.

The only thing it did was anger a core Democratic constituency. Some Democratic candidates who did flip seemed surprised at how much anger and dissent their transphobic platform created. Dealing with the fallout was a distraction and headache for them and their staff in the waning days of their campaigns. Thus, one could also make the argument that had these candidates not done a heel turn, they would have done even better given the lack of evidence that this was the issue that drew in centrist voters. ... 

Journalist Brynn Tannehill is a Naval Academy graduate, former naval aviator, author, and senior defense analyst. She currently lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her wife and three children.