The Big Tent Collapses in on Us
Three Democrats crossed the aisle to join Republicans in passing a nationwide ban on gender affirming care for youth Wednesday evening
Well, it happened finally. After a vote swapping deal by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a bill that would criminalize doctors and health care providers that provide gender affirming care for minors was brought to a vote in the House and passed by a slim 5 vote margin.
This is one of the bills that trans people have been dreading most since Republicans retook both chambers of congress and its passage in the House means that hundreds of thousands of trans youth and millions of trans adults woke up this morning as targets of a government sponsored purge.
We've all heard the arguments by now and I won't go deep on them here, but conservatives across the world, along with help from The Atlantic and the New York Times have spent years chipping away at international medical authority consensus on youth gender affirming care.
"There's not enough evidence," they say without refuting any of the evidence. "There are other ways," they say, without proving that any other ways have any evidence beyond the vibes of bigots. That was how science and health were undermined by the political class in order to punish queer kids for being queer.
That all came to a head yesterday with the passage of the most extreme and transphobic bill to come up for a vote in the House in recent years.
And three Democrats provided approving votes, making its passage possible despite four Republicans crossing the aisle to vote against it.
Henry Cuellar (TX), Vicente Gonzalez (TX), and Don Davis (NC) were the Democratic reps to betray human rights and partner with Republicans in endorsing this bigotry. If those three had voted the other way, the bill would have failed to pass by one vote.
I hope the 2% of their district voter base that cares most deeply about trans people, compared to affordability, housing, and health care costs, reward them at the ballot box next month.
I want to be clear here that Democrats aren't the only ones with agency in today's politics. This is 100% a Republican bill written by Republicans to advance an extremely hateful Republican agenda. But three Democrats did help and we cannot ignore it.
These three representatives are the latest example of the Democratic Party's "Big Tent" theory in action.
The first ever openly trans US Representative Sarah McBride has been a big and often stubborn advocate for the big tent theory. And yesterday, just after she stood on the steps of the Capitol poured her heart out with a very powerful and personal speech about her own experience as a trans person, that big tent collapsed in on her.
The big tent theory has been advanced as a way for Democrats to win in redder districts, despite Democrats struggling to win in redder districts before this year. The theory goes that since Republicans are forever getting more and more extreme as a party, that Democrats should expand their right flank to absorb more centrists and right leaning representatives to hopefully win over right leaning and centrist voters and win in a broader swath of the map.
But the theory has several big flaws, and one of them was exposed on Wednesday with MTG's heinous bill passing. The bills passage is a disaster for any trans people, friends of trans people, and caring family members of trans people, and that is a large portion of the Democratic party's base.
That three members of the party could not be whipped into killing this bill and denying a symbolic win to the worst Republicans ever seen is a stunning betrayal that hurts the already historically unliked Democratic party amongst the people who are most predisposed to like the party.
Even worse, those votes likely won't make a difference in those reps next campaigns. No one really cares about trans issues, even in reddish districts. The percentage of people who tell pollsters that trans issues are "extremely important" is very very low and getting lower with every dollar that the cost of eggs rises by.
Anti-trans attack ads have been countered and neutralized across the country in off year elections by focusing on affordability and painting the Republicans making those attacks as wildly out of touch.
That's what the four Republicans who crossed the aisle to vote against this bill are worried about. There was no reason for even red state Democrats to do the opposite.
Alienating the base and paralyzing your legislative caucus with the Cuellars, Manchins, and Sinemas of the world is no way to prove to voters that they should trust you and your big tent.
Yesterday, the Democratic party big tent collapsed in on trans people. Let's hope the Senate holds.
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