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11 days agoThe idea that actual swing voters, who are largely tuned out of 99% of available information, actually care about specific policies is overstated on all but a tiiiny subset of issues (which trans rights are not one of). Virtually no specific policy actually impacts electoral success on non-base turnout voting on its merits, it’s all campaign organization and media vibes, so I’d argue this is a false choice, largely. Nobody who isn’t already on a side cares about your platform, they care if you’re visibly embarrassed about your own platform (as democrats usually are about the 1% deviation from the GOP free market absolutism they dare in most cycles).
I’d argue that’s more archeoconservatism, what Trump represents and what has reinvigorated the right is more a regressive progressivism – forging a sort of Dune/Handmaiden’s Tale future that resembles an idealized past but is more a SciFi future reimagining of it, and government has an active role in producing that just as in normal progressive progressivism because you need the government to drive the change.