Ex-White House aide flags 'Achilles heel for Democrats' moving forward
A former White House aide to president Joe Biden reacted to Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) challenging Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) to a fight during an argument during a meeting of the House Oversight Committee.
Crockett accused her Republican colleague of demonizing transgender athletes to scare donors into giving her campaign cash, but Mace objected to the Democratic lawmaker using the colloquialism "child" in reference to her and invited her to "take it outside" – which former Biden aide Meghan Hays told CNN was completely unacceptable.
"They shouldn't be fighting like that," Hays told "CNN This Morning." "These are members of Congress that are elected or that are elected to represent the American people, so that is gross in its own display on both sides of the aisle there. But I do think this is going to be the Achilles heel for Democrats. This has been made to be an issue that Democrats writ large care more about trans issues that do impact such a small percentage of people than they care about their cost of groceries. It was very widely known in the election that that was one of the issues, and that the ad that played this is going to be the Achilles heel. So if Democrats do not learn how to speak about this, they will continue to lose ground on this, regardless of how many people it impacts."
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New York Times reporter Zolan Kanno-Youngs pointed out that Democrats really didn't talk about trans rights during the campaign, and said that Republicans hammered the issue instead and voted to ban trans athletes just days into the congressional session.
"It does seem like part of this, looking at that clip is about stoking divisions and sort of anger in the country," Kanno-Youngs said. "When to your point – 510,000 NCAA athletes, 10 identifying as transgender. This also isn't the first time we've seen this bill [banning trans athletes]. Republicans tried this last year, last year alone passed 80 or, excuse me, put forward 87 bills that had to do with this topic. So you see them trying to elevate this focus here, while on the other side, Democrats haven't figured out really any message, you know. "
"Well, I mean, I have talked to strategists who have said that it was about sort of saying Democrats care about this population and aren't working for sort of you that have come out for the party," Kanno-Youngs added. "But at the same time, also, we did start to see it's interesting to start to see sort of the ripple effects from the election as well on Democratic messaging, even in the defense or, excuse me, the pushback of this bill among many Democrats yesterday. You did not hear much of a message that centered on trans rights. It was about invasion of privacy for little girls as well – that's a shift."
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