ATLANTA — After losing the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats are grappling with how to handle transgender politics following a campaign that featured withering and often misleading GOP attacks on the question.

There are many doubts after the election of the president Donald Trump anchored his victory over the vice president Kamala Harris with radical promises on the economy and immigration. But Democrats also won’t soon forget the punchline from Trump’s anti-transgender ads that became ubiquitous on Election Day: “Kamala is for them; President Trump is for you.

“Week after week, when that ad stuck and we didn’t respond, I think that was the beginning of the end,” former Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell said of the spot of 30 seconds that was part of a $215 million anti-immigration campaign. -transgender advertising from Trump and Republicans, according to tracking company AdImpact.

“They portrayed her as someone I don’t think she is,” Rendell said. “They portrayed her as a far-left liberal.”

The fallout leaves some progressive and moderate Democrats struggling between the party’s modern identity as a champion of civil rights and its electoral fortunes in parts of America with which those attacks resonated.

“There are just a number of issues where we are out of touch,” Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate Democrat from Massachusetts, said in an interview, days after sparking recriminations within his party for saying that he didn’t want his daughters to play. in sports against biological males. Critics said Moulton echoed Trump’s arguments about liberals allowing “men to compete in women’s sports.”

“I think Republicans have a hateful stance on trans issues,” Moulton told the Associated Press, but insisted Democrats are still losing voters because of the party’s “attitude.”

“Rather than bashing you and telling you what to believe,” he argued, Democrats should “listen to hard-working Americans.”

LGBTQ+ advocates, meanwhile, argue that the 2024 election has been more about economic issues than Trump’s transgender rhetoric. They are urging political leaders to counter misinformation that they say threatens the health and safety of transgender Americans, who make up less than 1% of the U.S. population.

“Trans people have existed and coexisted,” received health care and participated in society for years, said Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of GLAAD, a leading LGBTQ+ advocacy group. “Nothing new happened,” Ellis said, other than Republicans pointing fingers at them during a presidential campaign year.

“It didn’t change a vote,” Ellis argued. “But it has made the world a lot more dangerous for trans people.”

Another Democratic lawmaker from Massachusetts, Rep. Ayanna Pressleydid not name Moulton, but said some reactions to the election had “scapegoated and dehumanized” transgender people. “This congresswoman sees you and loves you,” Pressley wrote on the social media platform X.

It’s certainly difficult, if not impossible, to identify individual issues that can swing a national election, and the results are mixed on what voters think about transgender rights.

According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 people who voted this fall, more than half of voters said support for transgender rights in government and society had gone too far. Around 2 in 10 said the support had not gone far enough and another 2 in 10 said it was about right. But among Trump voters, 85% said support for transgender people had gone too far.

Still, just over half of voters oppose banning gender-affirming medical treatments, such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers, while just under half support such proposals .

About a quarter of Harris voters said support for transgender rights in government and society had gone too far. About 4 in 10 said the results were about right, and about 4 in 10 said the results weren’t far enough.

Trump and the Republicans have relentlessly tried to capitalize on this issue. They piled on transgender athletes, with Trump falsely labeling two Olympic boxers as transgender women. They used Harris’ comments as a presidential candidate in 2019 — before she became vice president — to criticize her for laws granting transgender health care to federal prisoners and detainees.

And Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that “your child goes to school and comes home a few days later with surgery” to change their gender.

In reality, the Biden administration argued that Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity – but Department of Education the rules do not explicitly address transgender athletes. Federal law cited by Trump’s ads requires that people in U.S. government custody have access to gender-affirming medical treatment. These policies were in place throughout Trump’s term from 2017 to 2021; it’s not something the Biden administration has specifically instituted.