There Will Never Be a Sister Souljah Moment for Trans Rights

But that won't stop Democrats from trying for it anyway

In the midst of the 1992 presidential election, future president Bill Clinton visited Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition conference and delivered a now famous repudiation of Sister Souljah, an MC, writer, and political activist who had made controversial comments to The Washington Post the previous month.

The following is the quote published in the Post in the midst of the LA race riots:

Question: Even the people themselves who were perpetrating that violence, did they think that was wise? Was that a wise reasoned action?

Souljah: Yeah, it was wise. I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?... White people, this government and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence. So if you're a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person? Do you think that somebody thinks that white people are better, are above and beyond dying, when they would kill their own kind?

In his address to the conference, Clinton, who was flanked by the recently deceased Jackson, delivered carefully cooked up comments meant to distance himself from Jackson's coalition, which centrists viewed as "too extreme."

"If you took the words 'white' and 'black,' and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech," said Clinton, in a move that is often looked at fondly by political observers.

Ever since then, Democratic candidates for president have been under near constant pressure from an allegedly political neutral press to produce their own "Sister Souljah moment". A Google search for "Barack Obama Sister Souljah moment" reveals no less than a half dozen supposed happenings when Obama produced a moment of his own.

In August 2020, The Washington Post declared that Biden needs a Sister Souljah moment in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests. He didn't produce one and won that year. In 2022, the American Enterprise Institute called for Biden to also have a SSM. In 2023, the conservative National Review said Biden had his own SSM, though I don't know what it is because the article is paywalled.

Eleven months ago, pundit Chris Cillizza claimed that California governor Gavin Newsom had a SSM when he came out against trans women in women's sports in a podcast interview with Charlie Kirk, who is dead.

For my entire adult life, there has been a near constant effort to get Democrats to take a stand against their own left flank with these so-called moments. There has never been any similar pressure on Republicans to do the same even as the party has drifted further and further to the right in that same time period.

But let's be clear here, every call for a "Sister Souljah Moment" is really a call towards bigotry. The original SSM was Clinton repudiating Black oprganizers to appeal to racists, the calls for Biden to do so were also calls for him to appeal to racists.

The call today is for Democrats to repudiate trans people, and come out in support of Republican policies on trans issues. Trans issues are the new Sister Souljah, in a way. This year, it's a call to appeal to the transphobes who dominate the mainstream press.

According to a recent piece in The Argument, a fairly new centrist billionaire-backed blog published on Substack, people in the US have turned hostile on trans issues. The piece, backed by polling data shows just how uncomfortable US voters have become with the existence of trans people.

I don't need a poll to tell me this, I feel this animus in my bones. You don't end up as a demographic with an employment rate comparable to that of the Great Depression in the best of times by being beloved by the general population.

The piece argues that because voters hate Democratic policies on trans issues, that the party should moderate and meet voters where they are by abandoning trans people in areas the right has attacked them on for the better part of a decade.

And sure, this is a compelling case. The piece argues, I think rightfully, that the polling on trans issues is historically lopsided right now.

But the political analysis in the piece misses the mark by a wide margin.

Also contained within the piece is polling data showing that Trump is historically unpopular, and that voters trust Democrats overall by very wide margins. This has been backed up by a series of off year elections that have broken by 30+ margins throughout the US, from ruby red local districts and cities, to progressives beating centrists in blue areas.

All of this comes in a moment when Republicans are delivering on their promises to toss trans people out of society with stunning success. It comes in a moment when many Democrats are too timid to even mention trans issues, or even worse, are openly flirting with the fascist position on the existence of trans people.

All of this is an inherent contradiction. If voters are so unhappy with Democrats over trans issues, why have there been no repercussions at the ballot? If Republicans are so aligned with voters, why are they getting molly-whopped even in their own strongholds?

These are ironic questions, which to me bring to mind one of my own favorites: if trans athletes are allegedly so completely dominant, where are the trans world record holders (there are none in any major sport).

What's bleedingly obvious about all of this is that voters, for the most part, do not really care about trans issues. They may agree with Republicans on some of the more controversial issues, the reality is that there is no movable voter base who is deciding their vote based on fucking trans issues... Well, except for trans people and maybe some of our allies.

Exit polling from the 2025 off year elections showed that trans stuff was the last ranking issue for importance amongst actual voters.

I have yet to see any evidence that there are movable votes here. These polls never ask "would you vote for a Democrat if they agreed to oppose xyz trans issue?" It's always, do you oppose x or y, like gender affirming care for minors or trans athletes.

But these are boutique issues. If you're basing your vote solely on who treats trans people more poorly, you don't really suffer from any real problems.

The price of housing is out of control, the price of food has been rising for years, and the price of anything containing a computer chip is soaring thanks to fuckhead AI developers. What the fuck do you mean you're voting for whoever prevents whether some trans 6th grader from playing soccer with her friends?

Get a real problem, we're begging you.

I have no doubt that several Democrats vying for the White House will try to get their SSM headlines by denouncing trans rights or whatever, but none of them will move a single vote. Whoever ends up the Democratic nominee will still be branded as a pro-trans extremist by both the political press and the far right.

Democrats literally cannot do enough to change the votes of those who are already basing their votes on candidate hostility towards trans people. Democrats with White House ambitions should resist taking the bait and keep the focus on the issues that actually matter to real voters.

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