Democrats dreamt of an unbeatable coalition. Trump turned it to dust

In the last month of the presidential campaign, the Trump team made the vice-president’s past support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for federal prisoners and detained immigrants a central focus.

One advert ended with the line: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

The Trump campaign spent more than $21m on transgender issue ads in the first half of October – about a third of their entire advertising expenditures and nearly double what they spent on spots on immigration and inflation, according to data compiled by AdImpact.

It’s the kind of investment a campaign makes if it has hard data showing an advert is moving public opinion.

After Trump’s convincing win, Congressman Seth Moulton, a moderate from Massachusetts, said his party needed to rethink its approach on cultural issues.

“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” Moulton told the New York Times., external “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, reject that characterisation, and argue that standing up for the rights of minorities has always been a core value of the party. Congressman John Moran wrote on X in response, external: “You should find another job if you want to use an election loss as an opportunity to pick on our most vulnerable.”

Mike Madrid, the political strategist, has a brutal assessment of where the Democratic coalition is today.

“The Democratic Party was predicated on what really is an unholy alliance between working-class people of colour and wealthier white progressives driven and animated by cultural issues,” Madrid said. “The only glue holding that coalition together was anti-Republicanism.”

Once that glue came unstuck, he said, the party was ripe for defeat.