In an interview with Fox News, Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico made clear that he would be adopting a more moderate tone on transgender issues than he had in the past.
“I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness. Every sport has to be safe and fair,” he told the conservative-leaning network.
He also said he would support a national ban on transgender surgeries for minors.
The candidate, who has served in the Texas legislature for multiple terms, was quick to point out that he had supported restricting surgeries in the past. But going on Fox to affirm these positions in front of a national audience suggests that Talarico understands that viral video clips that showed him aligning himself with the cultural left on these topics in the past could be a liability in the Texas Senate race.
But there is a bigger issue at stake here than whether Talarico is politically adjusting in the face of his competitive Senate race against Texas’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.
In the post-Obama years, Democrats have often found themselves carving out the most culturally liberal position on mainstream issues no matter where they’re located in the country. You’d have Democrats in the South and Midwest talking almost identically to Democrats in New England or California when it comes to issues such as abortion rights or transgender activism.
Beyond being politically intelligent, Talarico understands that compromise is an essential part of democracy.
Two-thirds of Americans support requiring transgender athletes to “compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth,” according to one Pew Research poll. 56 percent of Americans support banning minors from receiving “medical care for a gender transition.” This is for Americans overall, mind you. The polling in Texas is likely to be far more conservative.
Does this mean politicians should chase public polls? Well, to some extent, yes. In a representative democracy, we elect representatives to do the people’s will. If Talarico chose to simply ignore the majority of Texans, he would not only put himself in a worse electoral position, he would also be disrespecting their democratic consensus.
That doesn’t mean that activists can’t play a role in trying to change public opinion. They aren’t elected by anybody, and they don’t have an obligation to listen to their constituency of voters each election.
But I think many Democratic Party electeds have behaved more as activists than lawmakers when it comes to this issue. Talarico’s tonal pivot is not only going to help him in an election against a corrupt and extreme Paxton, but it will help affirm that the party does indeed believe in the promises of representative democracy.
And El-Sayed apologized for his "hurt people hurt" quasi-justification for a terrorist attack. These are not examples of people changing their views. These are examples of politicians trying to obscure their beliefs. Talarico is fully on board with the Progressive agenda and, if elected, would vote accordingly to maintain his status among his peers. I'll believe a Democrat who comes out with a full-throated rejection of the woke madness that has driven Democrats like myself out of the party. That's not happening because mainstream Dems are poorly informed and more concerned with maintaining status as one of the good people.
I think you're being too generous with Talarico. He's a Democrat trying to win a conservative state with discontented conservative voters who look at anything Trump has touched and go green around the gills. He's removing at least one obstacle to the reasonable among them voting for him. But I fully agree it's a nice thought that we can pull politicians back to the land of the reasonable.