Trump, Harris, Higgs, and Transphobia’s Latest Failure

Lessons For America From New Brunswick

On Monday, the Canadian province of New Brunswick went to the polls in a provincial election where the incumbent conservatives weren’t in a good shape. One of the things they did to try and save their government was pick a fight on trans rights, specifically a policy from 2020 aimed at protecting trans students. The policy, and specifically the provision (or lack of) for parental notification, was a major fight.

The provincial conservatives ended up not just losing but getting their asses kicked despite the fact that the voters of New Brunswick agreeing with them on the issue. It’s not the first time leaders who have elevated transphobia as an issue have failed to win, and Andy Beshear’s 2023 win in Kentucky was but the most impressive of them. But it’s still interesting to think about what it means for the Presidential race, where Donald Trump is blasting the swing states with ads attacking Harris for being for “They/Thems” and not regular, average Americans.

I actually think it’s a fairly big mistake for Trump, and more importantly a complete reversal of the 2016 dynamic that won him the election in the first place.

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In 2016, Donald Trump’s closing argument, when you stripped away the bullshit and the endless digressions into whether Hillary killed Vince Foster or whether certain women were hot enough to rape or whatever else, was simple - Hillary is focused on nonsense issues that don’t matter to Regular Americans, while I am focused on what matters to you. It was the entire thrust of his debate performances, and certainly the focus of his paid media.

To some extent, that was effective, because he won. Clearly, there was a resonance with a certain kind of voter that Hillary was focused on ephemera while Trump was focused on “real” issues. Yes, the American electorate should have taken Hillary’s warnings on Roe and the state of American democracy more seriously, but they didn’t. Hillary’s campaign was seen as too woke, and too focused on issues that didn’t matter to people.

Whats funny is that critique is far more true of Trump than it is of Kamala now. In reality, Kamala is closing this election on apolitical issues like more help for first time home buyers and support for small businesses, while also hammering home abortion as an issue, while Trump is closing on transphobia. His paid media - the actual campaign decision, as opposed to whatever nonsense he says out loud - is the tell here. They think closing on “Kamala is for They/Thems” is a winning message. And I can’t think they’re falling for Hillary’s trap.

Abortion rights have, at least in modern times, always been more popular than the number of people willing to vote to protect them in a pre-Dobbs environment. Remember when we all mocked Mark Udall for trying to make abortion and access to contraceptives a priority in 2014 in Colorado? 8 years later, his ex-Senate colleague won by 20% on essentially the same priorities.

The problem for people is that they get fooled by issues polling into believing that anything that polls well is a good idea politically. Democrats fooled themselves with a lot of evidence that there was a pro-choice majority on abortion rights into running scare campaigns that did nothing. Hillary was right, of course she was, but it didn’t and doesn’t matter because she lost. And losing means nobody cares you were right.

In a similar sense, Mainstreet Research had Blaine Higgs’ trans policy above water by a not insignificant amount, and double digits above water in Saint John. The Liberals won wide swathes of the southern, Anglo seats anyways, including the rich suburb of Rothesay and inner Saint John. (Fun fact: my job on the Hill was repping the MP for Saint John-Rothesay and the guy who hired me was just elected in Saint John-Harbour.)

The story is pretty clear - the voters in Saint John and the surrounding suburbs agreed with Higgs on trans issues, but didn’t actually want to vote for him. It wasn’t a deciding election issue, as much as the right tried to elevate the issue. This is similar to what we’ve seen before when Republicans have elevated the issue even in friendly terrain - voters simply will not vote for vague notions of some social policy that feels distant to their current condition. Once that vague notion becomes a real problem, sure, it changes. But it’s hard to make transphobia a material circumstance or even a pressing issue. Most people, whether nominally pro or anti, simply don’t care about trans rights this much.

The risk for Trump is that voters might agree with him - I’m sure there are wide majorities against giving illegal migrants government funded transitions - but not do anything with it. Hillary campaigning on the imminent threat of abortion rights didn’t move the needle, the trans panics on sports didn’t move the needle, and schools policy and trans rights didn’t move the needle in New Brunswick. Scott Moe in Saskatchewan should probably still win reelection, but the fact that he’s having to go back to the transphobia well to try and save a sputtering campaign and the early evidence being it’s not working says a lot.

We know that individual policies polling well doesn’t actually guarantee success - see Miliband, Ed, and the barrage of individually popular policies that didn’t matter - but it’s underrated that what matters is less whether you have a suite of policies that on balance are popular but whether the issues the country cares about are the issues that you do well in. If the US exit polls show that abortion is the top issue, Democrats will sweep. If it’s immigration, they’ll get fucked. 

There is no evidence that trans rights is a message voters care about. There’s no evidence that this will actually move votes, even conceding that voters agree with Trump’s messaging. It’s a potentially big own goal for the Trump campaign to be ending their campaign with an anti-trans push, and Blaine Higgs shows the risk of focusing on it at the expense of your broader credibility.