The secret reason Democrats just can't seem to get their act together
Editor's note: The following essay first appeared in City Journal.
California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom surprised many recently when he labeled transgender-identified male athletes’ participation in women’s sports "deeply unfair." The forum, a podcast discussion with MAGA activist Charlie Kirk, was almost as striking as the statement itself.
But Newsom’s comments were conspicuously not a full-throated repudiation of gender ideology. They merely reflect a new trend within the Democratic Party that involves expressing public skepticism of transgender ideology while remaining unable to act against it.
This apparent mismatch between rhetoric and action is not just political expediency; it’s a structural problem. The Democratic Party increasingly finds itself in a balancing act: acknowledging how unpopular its activist class has become but remaining dependent on it for funding, organizing, and electoral mobilization. As long as Democrats are unable to break with their fringe, Republicans will keep using gender ideology as a stand-in for a broader critique of Democrats as a party that cannot be trusted to govern competently.
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The Democratic base is not committed to the liberal line on transgender issues. A January New York Times poll, in fact, found that more than two-thirds of Democrats—and 79 percent of Americans—oppose allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports. The political risk in disagreeing should be obvious.
Yet, when Republicans forced a Senate vote recently on a bill to bar biological males from female athletics, not a single Democrat broke ranks. Even Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, the Left’s purported blue-collar truth-teller, didn’t budge. Though he has diverged from his party on immigration and Israel, he toed the line, casting trans-identified athletes as innocent children caught in a "political maelstrom." Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin struck a similar note on "Meet the Press," saying the issue should be left to local communities.
Like Newsom, both Fetterman and Slotkin tried a rhetorical hedge, while voting firmly with their party. "Leave the decision to parents" in the case of medical interventions and "leave the decision to communities" in the case of sports have become Democrats’ standard responses to defend a position that most of their own voters don’t support.
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The refusal to moderate reveals where the real power lies within the Democratic Party. Though elected officials must win over voters every few years, they rely on the party’s activist class every day. Progressive NGOs, donor networks, and advocacy organizations exert enormous influence over Democratic primaries and policymaking—and they have zero interest in compromising on gender ideology. As a result, elected officials are incentivized to move away from majority opinion and toward ideological purity.
As Ruy Teixeira and John Judis argue in "Where Have All the Democrats Gone?" the party’s reliance on educated, activist-minded elites has alienated working-class and nonwhite voters. But for activists, staking out extreme positions is a feature, not a bug. It’s how they raise money, rally supporters, and consolidate control over the party’s policy apparatus.
Why do Democratic politicians listen? As Frances Lee documents in her book "Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign," the narrow, intensely competitive nature of modern elections forces both parties into a state of perpetual campaign mode, heightening the influence of activist factions. With control of Congress always up for grabs, parties prioritize short-term mobilization over long-term coalition-building—making them increasingly beholden to their most ideological supporters. The Democratic Party’s refusal to course-correct—even when it’s politically costly—is a direct result of this dynamic.
Democratic voters oppose males in female sports, but most don’t prioritize the issue. They may disagree with the activists, but they aren’t punishing their own party at the ballot box when it sides with them. Thus, an unmotivated public yields to a highly motivated single-issue lobby.
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But even if women’s sports aren’t most Americans’ top concern, the total lockstep from elected Democrats on gender issues underscores a deeper problem: the party is operationally incapable of breaking with its activist fringe. This is especially glaring in Newsom’s case, where his recent words do not match his actions.
In 2020, Newsom signed California’s Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, which allows male inmates who identify as female to be housed in women’s prisons. California continues to permit males to participate in female sports and is actively fighting the federal government on this issue, despite Newsom’s podcast-friendly talk of "fairness."
In his conversation with Kirk, Newsom claimed that no one in his office has ever used the term "Latinx," yet his own past statements prove otherwise.
Republicans have seized on Democrats’ gender confusion not simply by making voters care about transgender issues but by using those issues to expose Democrats’ broader weaknesses. If Democrats won’t stand up to fringe activists on this matter of bipartisan consensus, why trust them on anything else?
Newsom’s awkward half-pivot isn’t moderation. It’s an attempt to paper over the deep split in his party. Increasingly, Democrats are trying to talk like moderates while governing like activists. But politics is about choices, and Democrats have made theirs. They’re betting that voters will hate Donald Trump more than they’ll want to punish the party for caving to its fringe.
Thus, it falls to Republicans, and the Trump administration in particular, to prove them wrong—not just by hammering Democrats on gender ideology but by demonstrating basic competence on the issues voters care about most.