You know, this is actually a really engaging question, though I think the limited scope and parameters hinders things. And that title is accidental rage bait (which I think the down votes are a symptom of).

So, I’m going to ignore the “would you rather” aspect of things and just engage with the post in a way that interests me. If that’s not interesting to you, cool beans, read no further :)

First, I’m right with you. Trans rights are human rights, period. Secondarily, screw anyone that doesn’t like it, because trans rights cost nobody anything.

Now, the question that’s here leads fundamental questions about politics as a whole. Does a bloc need to campaign on all of its goals? If so, how active does that campaigning have to be to satisfy the members of that bloc and/or others that might align with it? Then, how are voters supposed to tell what the bloc’s real intent is? Finally, is it smart to campaign on a hot button issue when a race is close? There’s some side questions to those, but I think that’s the core set of issues here.

Now, I’m a practical motherfucker. I’m perfectly fine with campaigning smart, and playing off of opposing fractions’ issues. But I’m only going to support that bloc/party/faction if I can trust them to be playing smart instead of just ignoring the issue.

Take that to the current US election run. The lead candidate has historically been an ally in at least minor ways (and in some major ones) to trans people. The veep candidate is relatively well known for it too. So I would weigh the odds of them at least maintaining their overall stance on the subject being good. So, if they choose to soft peddle, or outright avoid letting the topic become an attack vector, I think that’s smart politics, and I’m okay with that.

Barring revolution, all changes are incremental and require work as well as time to make happen. I would wish for people as a whole to live up to the golden rule and be decent across the board, but I know that if you wish in one hand and shit in the other, one will fill up faster. So it’s a matter of steady pressure on each front as manpower, resources, and alliances allow. Voting for the least bad, or partially allied bloc is rankling, but a political reality since there aren’t enough people willing to have a revolution, and even those that are willing can’t really agree on what the new paradigm should be.

All of that is ignoring the fact that the U.S. is stuck with a two party system that is constantly leveraged for more control, more power, and more money for a very limited range of people. Those people, the ones actually running the parties, do not give a fuck about the people of the U.S. They’ll pick up or abandon any cause as needed for their real goals. Every politician is part of that, whether they want to be or not.

That means, for us, the ones not steering the ship of the US, that we have to pick our battles carefully, and carry along anyone we can at each stage of the fight. If that means voting democrat currently to achieve a long term goal, that’s the mess we’re in. And we work with that party over time, pushing them in way we want, expanding human rights as the easiest way to ensure profits and power.

It’s why LGB turned into LGBT, then LGBTQ, and whatever the next iteration is. Different, but related interests aligning to give smaller groups more power as a voting bloc. Power by numbers. If 2% of the population is bi (number chosen for the example, not accuracy), that’s ignorable. But you add 2% that’s gay men, 2% lesbians, 2% trans, and you start having enough numbers to be a factor in all elections, so long as they stay fair and legally operated. Even with gerrymandering, you can’t completely ignore a big enough bloc.

Right now, there’s zero point in campaigning hard on trans issues. Democrats are the only viable party, and they’ve shown willing to be allies overall. They pander enough to their base as it is, and anything else is a waste of resources. They push for swing voters and a handful of states because that’s the political reality. So that’s their focus, and it should be.

The smartest play is to shrug off objections to trans rights. Just ignore them as not being worthy of discussion. Let Republicans and other opposed people burn their fuel up on a mission they’ve already got a base built for. Republicans can’t radicalize any more than they doorway already have. But you can let them run their mouths with hate, and fire up their opposition to vote for the lesser evil.

There’s multiple strategies to employ to passively make it known the campaign is allied, and they’re doing that. Check out The Advocate, and some of their reporting about Harris. When you can get the press to do the work for you, why waste resources? They know that Harris/Walz has enough history of supporting LGBTQ issues that the press and organizations that focus on those issues are going to back them.

By simply not saying those articles and editorials aren’t true, they say that they are, or at least that’s the impression they want to give (and it’s pretty true from the stuff I’ve seen).

Harris’ campaign loses nothing by staying passive, but would also gain nothing by going active.

Now, I am not a Democrat, and haven’t been for decades. I’m way further left than Bernie Sanders, and he’s as far left as anyone that’s run democrat gets. But I’m also not a vote abstainer. Not so much because of presidential races, though I cast my vote there anyway. It’s the senatorial and house races, plus state and local races that matter more to me. There’s races at those levels where campaigning for trans rights makes sense, but others where it doesn’t.

That’s very important because during presidential years, people bloody well forget that once you get past voters that only vote for one of the two parties, votes count more. There’s more reason to carefully decide what to campaign on, and try to draw in anyone that’s likely to swing your way that isn’t a base voter.

Harris winning is not a guaranteed democrat win. If the Senate shifts, even if the house shifts, the national stage can mean the dems lose overall.