Why Republicans Will Never Stop At One
There is no sacrifice that will satisfy them.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched his new podcast this week, with the humble and insightful title, This Is Gavin Newsom. His first guest was Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. That wasn’t a scheduling mixup with the footballer. It was a deliberate statement of purpose.
Charlie Kirk is a bigoted, know-nothing extremist. There is no benefit in engaging him and offering him a platform that could’ve been extended to someone who represents the young Black and Latino men who didn’t turn out for Democrats last year. They are reachable voters. Kirk isn’t.
The topic eventually turned to transgender athletes, who Republicans have hunted for political sport. Newsom noted how Republicans had successfully “weaponized” the issue — an interesting choice of words because he doesn’t seem to acknowledge trans people, especially children, as the victims of persecution but instead simply “weapons” that Republicans turned against Democrats, costing them political power.
Newsom is obviously thinking about his own political advancement, so he declared that he was in “alignment” with Kirk that trans women shouldn’t play women’s sports. “Alignment” is a very corporate term, as if the fellow executives agreed to recommend that their company shutter the underperforming transgender division. When Kirk attacked transgender athletes in Newsom’s own state, he didn’t defend them. Instead, he distanced himself from the law that permits them to play in the first place.
“It turns out in 2014, years before I was governor, there was a law established that established the legal principles that allow trans athletes in women’s sports,” Newsom said. “The issue of fairness is completely legit. I completely align with you, we have to acknowledge it.”
The word “fairness” is bandied about a lot when discussing this issue, but it’s always one-sided. We are only asked to consider what’s “fair” for women and girls who aren’t trans. However, excluding the impacted minority from the debate is not uncommon. When white homeowners objected to Black families moving into their neighborhood, the focus was often on what was fair to the white people who weren’t prejudiced, mind you, but didn’t want to wind up the only white family in the neighborhood. They had to consider their property values! (Clip below from PBS’s The Great Migration.)
If Newsom wanted an informed discussion about matters directly affecting trans Americans, he could have invited Rep. Sarah McBride, a current target of Republican discrimination, or journalists
and , who’ve covered trans issues in depth. Instead, Newsom welcomed Charlie Kirk, who has nothing but contempt for trans people and genuine fairness.Newsom and Kirk — two well-off white men whose basic rights are never in question — remind me of when similar men would debate the merits of slavery. Once again, the question of fairness only had answers that served their specific interests.
The well-paid political consultants on Newsom’s payroll have probably told him that the polls show most voters agree with Republicans about trans women in women’s sports. This is an easy position to take with no downside — unless you’re trans, of course, but you’re still better off if Democrats are in power instead of Republicans, right? Take a punch in the face for democracy! (I fear that will be a Democratic campaign slogan by 2028.)
Journalist Matthew Yglesias, who Democrats take far too seriously, absurdly suggested that Kamala Harris “would be president today if she’d said some of the stuff that Newsom said in today’s chat with Charlie Kirk. We’d be talking about a more generous CTC instead of Medicaid cuts, abortion rights would be on firmer footing, and the world would be better off in many ways.”
It’s not clear that voters would’ve forgotten all about inflation if Harris had made “no trans women in women’s sports” a centerpiece of her platform. Yglesias has created a trolley problem where the driver is intoxicated. This is not the most valid test case.
Later, after everyone on the trolley tracks was dead, Yglesias asked, “Does it serve the interests of transgender Americans to lose elections to people who want to run them out of all spheres of public life because we are unwilling to adopt a mainstream view of what the purpose of sex-segregated sports teams is?”
Centrists like Yglesias advocate for a type of politics known as “popularism” where politicians simply pursue whatever positions are popular at the moment. It’s facile but could possibly work out in a world without any Republicans. Alas, that’s not our world. Republicans rarely embrace objectively popular positions. That’s why Democrats were so stunned when Republicans stuck with Donald Trump, even after his coup attempt, multiple indictments, and felony convictions. Republicans shift public perception to suit their preferred positions.
Democrats too often believe that if they compromise on an issue with Republicans, it will end there. Trans athletes are today’s late term abortions. Republicans successfully overturned Roe v. Wade, and although the resulting abortion bans they’ve passed are objectively unpopular, they aren’t interested in any good-faith compromises. They just keep spreading lies that Democrats support literal infanticide.
If you’ve seen The Transformers movies because you had nothing better to do, you’ll recall that the heroic Autobots oppose the evil Decepticons’ plan to enslave humanity and strip the Earth of its resources (a less extreme version of what Elon Musk is doing). Autobot leader Optimus Prime declares that “freedom is the right of all sentient beings,” which is noble in the abstract. However, their war seems as endless as the Trump presidency, and at one point, Decepticon leader Megatron basically wonders why Optimus can’t chill out and let him kill just one person.
“Is the future of our race not worth a single human life?” Megatron asks.
“You’ll never stop at one,” Optimus says. (Watch below.)
One is already too many but Optimus knows it’s only the start.
Republicans want to erase trans people from existence. Democrats thinks conceding on trans atheletes in sports will take the issue off the field, but Republicans will never stop at one. Democrats need to see Republicans as clearly as Optimus Prime sees Megatron or, in the real world, Ukraine President Zelenskyy sees Vladimir Putin. You can’t negotiate “peace” with a dictator, only your surrender.
Newsom probably believes it’s good politics to negotiate “peace” with people like Kirk, but that’s not the leadership America needs right now. Against a relentless fascist regime, we need politicians who are willing to defend the most vulnerable among us and tell our enemies, with true conviction, “You’ll never stop at one. So don’t even start.”
While Harris’s loss likely had more to do with the economy and post-pandemic anger, to the extent she was hurt on the trans issue I’d argue it was because her defense was weak and apologetic—she avoided the issue mostly (which is the popularist strategy@0–talk more about your more popular issues like Roe) and when she did have to talk about it she’d say “I did what the law required.” That’s called playing on ground set by your enemy.
Imagine if she’d set the ground herself—“you want to pick on vulnerable Americans, just because they’re different? How about we talk about why you freaks are so interested in policing other people’s genitals? I say let people live their lives, if you don’t like it, there are other countries you can move to where genitals inspections are normal! I say live and let live, asshole!”
I know it’d be very un-Kamala to speak that way, but she’d have turned that issue on its head and Dems everywhere would be asking why Republicans want to check out everyone’s junk. Memes would explode, late night comics would riff on it, trans Americans AND non-trans people who are sick of this crap would be emboldened and—this is key—even voters who DISAGREE with Harris on this issue would respect and admire her willingness to fight fierce like this.
Voters often reward strength even when they don’t agree with the politician on the issue—Trump’s supporters are a good example of this, yet Democrats keep believing that voters check off issues on a list like robots.
Boy this was stabbity to see from Newsom. But I'm glad he revealed this before the primaries before people could get locked in. So we know that the right choice will be not him.