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Today I will post of the ballot measures. Similar to 2024, there were a lot. What is notable to me is that many states that ended up electing Democrat politicians also ended up voting for many initiatives that I'd consider Republican priorities, including lower taxes and voter ID. This includes four states that limited transgender athletes, transgender bathroom access, and more, those four states being Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Washington.
One of my friends in Arizona quickly said that this might be the death of transgenderism as a politically relevant issue. He thought it was likely that the issue would be dropped as an election loser, as something that the people obviously did not want since they voted against it by majority in even what you might consider quite "Blue" states. I said what could be summarized as "I doubt it", maybe along with "you'd be surprised". I think I have been vindicated in saying this, as the Colorado governor is outright saying that he's going to fight these measures that have been passed to the best of his ability, and there are already schemes to nullify those ballot measures. Anecdotally, I see transgender rights commenters saying that the Arizona propositions are illegal even if the people did vote for them.
Most of these culture war issues are not things that can be resolved by simple votes. They can only be resolved through decades-long grueling lawfare. Blues don't take 'no' for an answer, as their responses to Heller and Bruen and now this ballot measure show.
Not gonna leave any room for persuasion or the "changes come one tombstone at a time"?
Persuasion won to the point these policies passed even in Washington and Colorado. But, nevermind, the Colorado governor and I'll presume the activist Washington state Supreme Court will fail to implement or find a contrived excuse to block them. Preserving "our democracy" in plain opposition to a majority of voters.
I mean, at least some of the logic of constitutional republics as opposed to direct democracy is that some things are literally off limits to vote on. In theory, even if 90% of Californians were in favor of dispossessing every legal gun owner in the state, the Supreme Court would strike such a law down, and rightly so as a matter of law.
While trans rights are not enshrined in the Federal constitution, state courts can have different precedence around state constitutional provisions that might validly allow them to strike down a law like this under their state constitution. I don't think they should if they want to win going forward, because the same blue wave that gave the Democrats Texas also rejected trans rights even in already purple or blue states, and I think the Democrats have better odds in the next few years if they field "normal" candidates, who don't take the "wrong" side of an 80/20 issue. If they boil the frog like they did with gay rights, I think they'll have better odds on trans rights.
While voters clearly don't like trans, it's clearly not a high-salience issue for voters most of the time. I think voters brutally punish being way-too-online, at least in normal years, but when trans issues aren't suddenly relevant due to recent events they are in themselves typically ignored by voters.
Then why did the Democrats win in 2020? Or am I misunderstanding the definition of "way too online"?
Trump was rather infamous for spending most of his first term on Twitter…
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